We have placed sixth in the national rankings for NIH grant funding for Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery (OHNS) departments as compiled by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, while the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine is #1 in NIH funding using the same accounting method.
But those numbers don't tell the entire story. The department also has grants from the Department of Defense, from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine that were not factored into the Blue Ridge Institute's compilation. Nor did the compilation include new grants that investigators like Matthew Spitzer, PhD, and James Bigelow, PhD, brought into the department. What's more, our senior investigators have submitted many other applications for grants that are pending review. We can be extremely proud of our areas of laboratory effort that include central auditory processing, nano-medicine, immunology, functional imaging, cochlear physiology, stem cell research, microbiome research, global surgery, tissue engineering and cancer signaling. The teams are truly amazing and leverage the incredibly collaborative research environment at UCSF and at the University of California, Berkeley.
Clinically, it's no exaggeration to say our department is in a growth spurt. Rebecca M. Lewis, AuD, PhD, came to the department as Chief of Audiology in February. A few months earlier, we welcomed Megan Durr, MD, FACS, as our interim chief of service at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. In addition, four other new faculty will be joining the department later this year, including two otologists, a laryngologist and an oncologic and reconstructive surgeon. We are close to opening several new facilities, including surgery centers in Berkeley and in San Francisco, and we anticipate further recruitment in the next few years. All that is in line with the growth envisioned by Suresh Gunasekaran, the new president and CEO of UCSF Health.
Our faculty has taken on numerous leadership positions. Steven Cheung, MD, is completing his two-year term as chair of the UCSF Academic Senate, and he is vice president-elect of the Western Section of the Triological Society. Andrew Goldberg, MD, will soon be president of the Triological Society. The Society's journal, The Laryngoscope, lists four of our faculty on its masthead: Daniel Knott, MD, is an associate editor for Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery; Jolie Chang, MD, is an associate editor for Sleep Medicine; and Megan Durr, MD, and Clark Rosen, MD, are on the editorial board. On the subject of editorial leadership, Patrick Ha, MD, is now editor-in-chief of Head and Neck, one of the top research journals in our field.
The UCSF OHNS residency program remains a jewel. Our team of residents is incredibly accomplished, and the placement of our recent class into fellowships and excellent jobs – academic or private practice – has been gratifying. But leadership is the glue that holds the program together. Program Director Steven Pletcher, MD, and Associate Program Director VyVy Young, MD, employ insight and innovation in keeping our educational culture fun and collaborative. A recent blog article discusses a paper by Steve and Taylor Standiford, MD, concerning the signaling process in residency admissions, and I urge you to check it out.
Our very own Jennifer Grandis, MD, will deliver the John Conley, MD, Lecture on Medical Ethics during this fall's meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. I hope to see you there, and even sooner on June 17, when Dana Thompson, MD, will be our Sooy Visiting Professor. And plan to attend the UCSF Otolaryngology Update later this year at the Hotel Nikko in November.
Warmly,
Professor and Chair
UCSF Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery
This note was originally published in the Spring 2023 edition of "HeadsUp!" You can read more articles from the publication here.
