Illinois Medicine

Vanessa Peoples Named Assistant Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Planning Vanessa Peoples, MBA, joined the University of Illinois College of Medicine as assistant dean of strategic initiatives and planning in August 2022. Since her arrival, Peoples has helped ensure the successful implementation of the College of Medicine's strategic plan, as well as other strategic initiatives, by continuously monitoring progress; coordinating the work of various committees, task forces and work groups; and regularly updating College of Medicine leadership and the COM community at large. Peoples came to the College of Medicine from the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, where she oversaw business and financial activities and served as a member of the senior leadership team and key adviser to the lab director on all funding matters to support lab priorities. Prior to joining Fermilab, Peoples served for 10 years in the University of Illinois Chicago Office of Business and Financial Services, including two years as assistant vice president for business and finance and chief business officer. She previously spent nearly a decade working in financial management at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BBA from Howard University. IOMEDICAL RESEARCH IS A DYNAMIC AREA WHERE DISCOVERY IS FUELED BY COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION. Often referred to as a "team sport," it requires researchers with specialized knowledge in areas such as cell, molecular and systems biology; artificial intelligence and machine learning; immunology; and multi-omics to work together to achieve a common goal. Last fall, the College of Medicine launched the Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series to share some of the leading-edge, multidisciplinary investigations that are underway at institutions throughout the U.S. with UI COM's research community, junior faculty, fellows, residents and medical students. National Eye Institute Director Michael F. Chiang, MD—a pediatric ophthalmologist whose research focuses on the interface of biomedical informatics and clinical ophthalmology—kicked off the series in October with a presentation titled "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Lessons from Ophthalmology About Where We're Heading." In January, K. Ranga Rama Krishnan, MB, ChB, Rush University System for Health senior adviser, shared his perspective on innovations in medicine and healthcare delivery—from gene and cell therapy to precision therapies for cancer to the impact of big data and artificial intelligence. In April, Peter Palese, MD, PhD, professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a pioneer in the field of reverse genetics for negative-strand RNA viruses, presented on the topic "Why Do We Vaccinate Against Influenza—Again and Again?" "This lecture series is designed to bring in the experts, the leaders—those who have made seminal contributions to science and medicine—to interact with our faculty, our students and our college as a whole," says University of Illinois College of Medicine Executive Dean Mark I. Rosenblatt, MD, PhD, MBA, MHA '19. 10 | Summer 2023 Vanessa Peoples, MBA A new forum for the exchange of information and ideas at the frontiers of medical science Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series B Dean's Distinguished Lecturer K. Ranga Rama Krishnan, MB, ChB P H O T O : P H I L B E R T U L F O

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