Three Faculty Members Appointed to Associate Vice Chancellor Positions

Three faculty members from the University of Pittsburgh’s Schools of the Health Sciences were recently appointed to leadership positions at the associate vice chancellor level.

Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine, announced this week that Derek C. Angus, Paula Davis and Mark W. Geraci will take up their respective positions to promote health care innovation; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and interdisciplinary research at Pitt.

Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Care Innovation

Angus will take up the inaugural role of associate vice chancellor for health care innovation, which complements his recent appointment as UPMC’s chief health care innovation officer. Here, Angus will foster more strategic linkages between the two organizations as Pitt seeks to enable learning health systems. He will work to stimulate the fusion of multiple disciplines and skills, blending expertise in clinical care delivery with organization science, decision psychology, machine learning, Bayesian trial designs, causal inference, implementation science and behavioral economics, among others.

“Dr. Angus is ideally positioned for his new roles. He is an internationally renowned and highly prolific scientist who has developed and led many successful multidisciplinary collaborations of basic scientists, clinicians, data scientists, economists, and behavioral and social scientists,” said Shekhar. “In recent years, he has been a leader in developing and evaluating approaches that facilitate smarter decision-making and faster learning in health care.”

Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Davis will be responsible for coordinating the recruitment and retention of diversity among faculty, students and staff in the health sciences schools. She will also provide education on cultural competence, creating an inclusive environment and eliminating structural and implicit bias. In addition, her office will aim to increase engagement among all health sciences stakeholders through a number of new initiatives and events that will examine the intersection of health sciences, racism and marginalized populations.

“Promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and health justice is a top priority for the future of our health sciences schools,” said Shekhar. “I am delighted to announce her (Davis’) promotion to the newly created position of associate vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Associate Vice Chancellor for Interdisciplinary Research

Geraci will work to build strong, cross-cutting collaborations, with the ultimate goals of promoting health and healing, curing disease and generating life-enhancing products and technologies. He will also serve as professor of medicine in Pitt’s Division of Pulmonology, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine. His research interests center on the role of the signaling molecules eicosanoids in the biology of lung cancer and pulmonary vascular diseases.

“One of my goals for the future of Pitt Health Sciences is to be among the top five programs nationally in translational excellence, team science, large center grants, and commercialization and product development—and to be among the top three in overall research excellence,” said Shekhar. “As a key step in achieving this vision, I have asked Dr. Geraci to advance research efforts across all six health sciences schools by enhancing the infrastructure necessary to support the University’s expanding biomedical research activities—especially large-scale, interdisciplinary projects that extend even beyond the health sciences to other Pitt schools and programs.”

Read Shekhar’s full message about the leadership appointments.