As we turn the corner into the 2022-2023 academic year, there is much that is the same and much that is not. What is the same is that the SARS CoV2 pandemic continually throws some curve balls at our community with highly infectious variants that cause continued health risks. The pandemic conditions also cause major problems with maintaining adequate staffing for our medical centers on a daily basis. But we have seen a return to more normalized care volumes as our society learns to live with the virus by leveraging vaccination and precautionary measures.

What is new is our current cohort of residents, fellows, and faculty. We have five new PGY-1 interns, 4 new fellows, and several new faculty members: Grace Banik, MD in pediatric OHNS, Caroline Schlocker, MD in General OHNS, and Mary Xu, MD in Head and Neck Oncologic Surgery, Head and Neck Endocrine Surgery, and Microvascular Free Flap Reconstruction. We have two new RO1 grants in the department: Matt Spitzer, PhD specializes in immunology and leverages Cytof technology and James Bigelow, PhD works in central auditory processing in the Coleman Laboratory. Our team also secured 3 CORE grants: Neil Patel, MD has a project funded by ARS, Jacqueline Harris, MD has a project funded by ASPO, and Andrea Park, MD has a project funded by the AAFPRS. It has been an excellent year for research funding and our NIH ranking is currently #4 in the nation for 2021. In our latest US News ranking, the department remains in the top 10 at #6 for 2022.

Finally, I want to congratulate two faculty members specifically. Clark Rosen, MD just completed his year as American Laryngological Association President and Andrew Goldberg, MD was just chosen as President-Elect of the Triological Society. These two society leadership positions are emblematic of the esteem with which these two individuals are held by our profession. When you see Clark and Andy at an upcoming meeting, please do not hesitate to congratulate them and to learn how you can contribute to our professional societies.

I hope to see you at one of our upcoming CME events: Mark Varvares will be our 2022 Roger Boles, MD Visiting Professor on September 29. Our Head and Neck Oncology Update will be held on November 10-12 in San Francisco, our UCSF/Penn Sleep Course will be Presidents Day week in Orlando, and the UCSF Pacific Rim Otolaryngology Update will be February 17-21 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Andrew H. Murr, MD, FACS
Professor and Chair
UCSF Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery