A message from the dean

As I attended the Research Innovation Awards Banquet last week, I was reminded of the power of collaboration and the special role played by university researchers.
 
The banquet was the highlight event for Innovation Week, the annual celebration of the innovative research and discoveries in our university. The weeklong celebration is sponsored by UNeMed, UNMC’s longtime partner for our technology transfer and commercialization needs.
 
This year’s banquet was attended by a record crowd of more than 180 people. The attendance bump was due in large part to UNeMed signing an agreement last December to also handle the technology transfer activities of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which contributed to a record number of new inventions for UNeMed, surpassing the previous record set in 2012 by 37 percent.
 
The College of Medicine is playing an important role in these efforts. Congratulations to the two College of Medicine researchers in the department of pathology and microbiology, Drs. Catherine Gebhart and Verun Kesharwani, who received the Most Promising New Invention Award. They were recognized for developing a multiplex assay that detects four types of human herpes viruses. We look forward to this invention reaching the market soon.
 
On the personnel front, there were two major announcements that I want to acknowledge. First, Dr. Ken Cowan announced that he will step down as director of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer at the end of June 2019. 
 
For the past two decades, Dr. Cowan was among the leaders in turning UNMC/Nebraska Medicine into an internationally acclaimed center for cancer care and research. He has been a great partner for the College of Medicine as we expanded our cancer research programs.
 
Dr. Cowan was a driving force in the creation of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center – the largest construction project in the history of the University of Nebraska. He contributed to the recruitment of more than 200 faculty to the cancer center and witnessed a three-fold increase in research, with more than $60 million in 2018.
 
Congratulations and thanks for a job well done! We are thrilled that he plans to continue as a full-time UNMC faculty member, to include patient care.
 
Second, I want to recognize Dr. Ronald Krueger who will join UNMC next spring as chair of the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences and director of the Stanley M. Truhlsen Eye Institute, whose clinical programs are part of Nebraska Medicine. My thanks to the search committee, led by Drs. Kari Simonson and David Mercer, for their efforts in making the recruitment of Dr. Krueger possible.
 
Dr. Krueger is an internationally recognized eye surgeon from one of the top eye institutes in the country – the Cole Eye Institute of the Cleveland Clinic. A refractive eye surgeon, Dr. Krueger has performed more than 25,000 vision correction procedures. These are procedures such as LASIK, PRK and SMILE that can reduce or eliminate an individual's dependency on glasses or contact lenses.
 
We are thrilled that he will bring his expertise and leadership to our medical center. One of his many goals is to strive to unify ophthalmology in Omaha through his "Unity in Community" initiative. With the resources available at the Truhlsen Eye Institute and our academic medical center, he hopes to brand Omaha as an eye health care hub based on its high standard of eye health care and significant eye innovation.
 
Finally, I want to say thanks to Dr. James Gigantelli who has been serving as interim director of the department and the eye institute for the past couple years. He has done an outstanding job in that role. It was recently announced that Dr. Gigantelli has been named chair of the department of ophthalmology at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W.V., and will move to West Virginia in February. We are sad that he will be leaving UNMC but wish him all the best as he begins this next chapter in his career. Marshall will be fortunate to have him.