David L. Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., vice president for health sciences and professor of surgery, microbiology and immunology at State University of New York at Buffalo, is the new executive vice president for health affairs at the University of Louisville. The UofL Board of Trustees today voted on his appointment, which is effective July 1.
Dunn fills the position left by Dr. Larry Cook, who announced his resignation last year. Cook returns to the faculty in the Department of Pediatrics on July 1 after serving since 2003 as the executive vice president for health affairs.
“Dr. Dunn brings to UofL a skill set that will help move us to the next level as a premiere academic medical center in very short order. He has experienced and resolved many of the issues associated with a rapidly growing research enterprise, and he has harnessed that energy so that it becomes very constructive and enables further expansion in the future,” said Dr. James Ramsey, president of the University of Louisville. “We sought a national leader for this position and we have found one.
“I would be remiss if I didn’t pay appropriate tribute to Dr. Larry Cook and all he has done in his nearly 40 years of service with UofL,” Ramsey continued. “As one of the nation’s fathers of neonatology, he helped to put UofL on the map. He has helped us grow from a small private medical school producing new clinicians to a major academic medical center. His vision for what we are capable of doing is the driving force behind the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center.”
As vice president for health sciences at University at Buffalo, a position he has held since 2005, Dunn was responsible for leading the strategic integration of teaching, research, service and clinical activities of UB’s five health sciences schools (Dental Medicine, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Nursing, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Public Health and Health Professions), and their departments, programs, centers and hospital and clinical affiliates.
Dunn has either led or co-led the following initiatives at or on behalf of UB: