Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1363384
"Experiencing a once-in-a-generation pandemic is unpredictable, but what has been entirely predictable is the dedication of our students, faculty and staff. They care about each other and the College," says COM Executive Dean Mark Rosenblatt, MD, PhD, MBA, MHA. P H O T O : D I A N E S M U T N Y own home. His father was the only surgeon practicing in the rural town along the banks of the Ohio River, where the family settled after a military career. "Because we lived in a close- knit community in Maysville, I met my dad's patients all the time—at restaurants when we went out for dinner, or at Little League baseball games," recalls Rosenblatt. "I saw how my father dedicated himself to the profession and the way he loved changing his patients' lives." Rosenblatt lost no time in pursuing an MD degree after graduating from high school in Michigan, where his parents and younger sister eventually relocated to be closer to extended family. In 1989, he enrolled in a six-year accelerated BS/MD honors program in medical education at the University of Miami in Florida. A summer stint in a University of Michigan translational research lab during his undergraduate years piqued his interest in becoming a clinician-scientist. "We were making cancer tracers to be used in humans," says Rosenblatt. "The fact that we were doing something very special for patients grabbed me, and I have never lost that desire to make the kinds of differences that help people." A combined MD/PhD program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine was the next step in his medical and scientific education. He earned his doctorate in biochemistry, cell and molecular biology. Part way through Rosenblatt's MD/PhD training, a neuropeptide he had been studying ended up having function in the eye. The discovery gave new insight into the eye's sensory ability to protect itself as well as the mechanisms of destructive inflammation. This finding led to collaborations with vision scientists at the University of Miami, which had one of the best ophthalmology programs in the country. This familiarity with the specialty at the highest levels of excellence, plus the medical and surgical aspects of ophthalmology, appealed to Rosenblatt. He went on to an ophthalmology residency and combined clinical/research fellowship in corneal disease at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary at Harvard Medical School. After completing his clinical training, Rosenblatt embarked on his academic medical career with a faculty position at the University of California, Davis, where he taught from 2005 to 2008. When he joined the College of Medicine in 2014 to head the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences, Rosenblatt already had honed his leadership skills in the department of ophthalmology at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he served starting in 2008 as the department's vice chair and director of the Margaret M. Dyson Vision Research Institute. Rosenblatt was enticed to come to Chicago because of the stellar reputation of the COM and its department of ophthalmology. "It is a preeminent academic department that's been in existence for 161 years—longer than the university itself," he says. "It is nationally known for excellent clinical care, outstanding education and innovative research programs. Coming here was an opportunity I couldn't pass up." Illinois Medicine | 9