Colleagues,

One of the most important instruments for sustaining scholarship at an academic institution is the implementation of endowments. They provide a steady, stable source of money for research and act as important tools for recruitment and retention of talented faculty. Moreover, endowments add prestige and esteem to the faculty who hold them.

During the past year, we have been able to add eight endowed positions to our departmental portfolio, three of which are new endowed scholarships.

Ryan Melvin, Ph.D., is the inaugural Endowed Faculty Scholar for Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. Dr. Melvin’s most recent work has brought data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning tools to the perioperative space. These contributions promise to establish our department as a leader in these fields and begin to have profound impact on patient care; permeating all aspects of perioperative medicine and medicine in general.

Promil Kukreja, M.D., Ph.D., CMQ, FASA, has been awarded the Endowed Faculty Scholar for Clinical Research in Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Medicine. As vice chair for Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Medicine, Dr. Kukreja has been very successful in producing publications of our prospective randomized studies, case reports, and review articles—creating a robust platform to excel our missions. The new endowed position will allow him to support our talented faculty and keep our department highly competitive on a national level for the ever-expanding field of Regional Anesthesia.

Beth Duggan, M.D., is the recipient of the Endowed Scholar in Faculty Development and Leadership Studies. Our department is one of the first anesthesiology departments in the country to offer this type of endowment, and Dr. Duggan will be charged to create and sustain systems which build social support and mentoring networks, enable job crafting, foster autonomy, coach personal and professional growth, and sustain intrinsic motivation—meaningfully engaging physicians as individuals, colleagues, educators, and leaders.

We are indeed grateful to both the department and institution for funding these new endowments and recognize the value of these tools in aligning with our enhanced academic mission. Please join me in congratulating the inaugural recipients for their well-deserved appointments.

Sincerely,

Dan B.