Dean's Update
January 20, 2023 - Aron Sousa, MD
Friends,
One of the great privileges of my job is meeting with alumni and college friends whose lives have been touched by the college and who in turn make the world a better place. Last week, I had the chance to catch up with Chad Klochko, MD (CHM ’13), MS, who is a musculoskeletal radiologist at Henry Ford. You might have noticed last spring that he won the MSU Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities’ 2022 Outstanding Alumni Award. Chad has had numerous orthopedic surgeries dating back to when he was 13 months old – you really should read the award article I linked above.
Chad came to CHM with a BS in computer science from MSU and a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from UM, and he has brought that background to bear in his artificial intelligence research at Henry Ford. Starting with the announcement of the HFH+MSU partnership, Chad began working with MSU faculty members Adam Alessio, PhD (IQ and BME) and Mohammad Ghassemi, PhD (Computer Science and Engineering). Now the team includes PhD students from both of those departments.
Together they have been using artificial intelligence methods to improve radiology protocols and look for hidden diagnostic clues in radiology images. The science is very interesting, and as a collaboration, they have published papers, submitted NIH grants, and MSU graduate students have had the chance to work with data sets and projects they could not otherwise do in our system. This is exactly what the HFH+MSU partnership is designed to do, and I’m excited that Chad has agreed to discuss his journey at a future Town Hall.
As many of you know, the College of Human Medicine’s Strategic Plan includes a goal to increase the public intellectual work available to our staff, students, and faculty. Specifically, we have a goal to support career growth and development of our people, and one of the strategies is to support and build capacity of our staff and faculty to do public intellectual work.
I think this public work is important for our society given the struggles of the pandemic, and it helps our reputation because most of us access information and developments outside our specific fields from public media rather than scholarly publications.
As a recent example, I’d like to point you to a piece in The Conversation by Dr. Morteza Mahmoudi on nanomedicines and the challenges the field faces. Dr. Mahmoudi is in the Department of Radiology and the Precision Health Program. (You can find an “Ask the Expert” summary from MSU Today.) This kind of article helps people see our work, improves the reputation of MSU, and many people find public intellectual work fun, and maybe even a bit joyous (part of strategic goal number 4.) As we implement the plan, we will provide more training and support for this kind of work.
You all know we are headed into our MD accreditation site visit and completed our MPH accreditation site visit last spring. We have also had Continuing Medical Education (CME) as well as residency accreditation this fall and winter. So, let me offer my congratulations to our team in Graduate Medical Education (GME) for receiving continuing accreditation for our sponsored residency programs and to our CME team for continuing accreditation in CME. Assistant Dean Randy Pearson, MD, and his team have done great work keeping us on the straight and narrow for many years in GME. Kathy Collins and Associate Dean Carol Parker, PhD (CHM ‘17) have kept the same focus on excellence for our CME work. These are valuable accomplishments resulting from many faculty dedicated to educating their colleagues. My deep thanks and appreciation to all involved.
As you head into the next part of your week, I suggest you watch the State of the University presentation by our Interim President, and college faculty member, Teresa Woodruff, PhD. She highlights so much good and interesting work happening at the university. Included in her call outs are exciting projects by our faculty. Whether your work makes the callout list or not, thank you for your dedication to our students, faculty, and staff.
Serving the people with you,
Aron
Aron Sousa, MD, FACP
Dean