Welcome to the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago! At all the outstanding academic medical universities, the department of medicine is the drumbeat of the institution, setting the flavor and intensity of the academic culture. This is clearly the case for the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. I am deeply honored to be leading this great department whose longstanding and sustained tradition of excellence in research, education and patient care has placed it among the best academic departments in the country.

We are living in extraordinary times of great scientific opportunity where, in the post-genome era, the bridge between scientific discovery and the alleviation of human suffering has never been shorter. The Department of Medicine’s mission is to serve as a nationally recognized model for delivery of personalized medicine, a lofty goal accomplished by continuing to strengthen our clinical, basic and translational research and discovery. This is achieved through interdisciplinary investigations that provide a greater understanding of the genetic basis of human disease and the mechanisms of complex pathologies. To that end, we have established a department-wide translational research initiative which serves to integrate DNA, serum and plasma accrual efforts in both inpatient and outpatient venues. Our Department has emerged as a recognized leader in translational genomic knowledge.

An unwavering focus of the Department is to serve as the best national model for the training of future physician-scientists. We are home to four nationally regarded residency programs (Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Medicine Pediatrics and Dermatology). Residents that matriculate through our programs are superbly clinically competent and fully equipped to undertake academic careers in teaching, clinical research and basic science research. Our residents obtain their 1st choice of fellowship programs over 80% of the time with these positions usually obtained in the very best academic programs nationwide, a fact clearly reflecting the high esteem in which our program and house staff is held. Further, the Department has twelve fellowship programs, including the seven federally funded training grants, all with the goal of providing state of the art training in basic and translational medicine as well as health-service related research.

The Department’s strong clinical programs deliver high quality, comprehensive and highly innovative patient care in all subspecialty areas. The clinical prowess of the Department is routinely recognized by the highly regarded U.S. News and World Report (July 2007) with two of our subspecialty programs placing in the top 10 and four placing in the top 25 programs in the country. Our physicians are dedicated to the highest quality of care for patients in our community and tertiary referrals and are committed to the training and success of future clinical scholars and educators.

The Department of Medicine is well equipped with a corps of exceptionally skilled and devoted clinician scholars, physician-scientists and clinical educators who are among the best in the world. As the largest department in the University, we are proud of our accomplishments in scientific discovery, in promoting the science of personalized care and in the training of both healers and leaders in medicine. The future of our Department is one of unlimited potential in our academic mission as we apply our new knowledge and discovery at the forefront of medicine and at the front line of patient care.