President’s Messageby Dolores B. Njoku, MD
2025 | Winter Issue Newsletter Dear Colleagues, Fall is here in Saint Louis. The undergraduate, medical, and post-graduate students have returned. The school sessions have begun! The evening lights of night classes have also commenced. The days are shorter. As the trees change to yellow and then lose their leaves, my thoughts go to the Association of University Anesthesiologists (AUA) 2026 Annual Meeting. Let me explain. The AUA Council, upon receiving advice and input from members, has been feverishly working on a program worthy of our academic faculty! Recognizing that we have tough acts to follow from Washington University in Saint Louis in 2024 to the Harvard Consortium in 2025, as things take shape, we know that we must experience fall and winter before spring, when we will gather in Seattle, Washington. After extensive discussion, we have agreed on a theme: “Discovery, Mentorship and Adaptive Learning in an Evolving Healthcare Environment.” We feel that this encompasses our collective thoughts and experiences and provides a platform to move forward. I have served as your President for almost two years, and I am constantly humbled by our discussions, and mostly the time that we spend together working to ensure the future of academic anesthesiology. While it is tempting to review the last two years, I would prefer to inform you about the meeting. Our keynote this year will be given by Dr. Julie A. Bastarache. Dr. Bastarache is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. She also has roles in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology & Immunology and in Cell & Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt and serves as Assistant Vice President for Clinical & Translational Scientist Development at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is the force behind the successful Edge for Scholars program and has been elected Vice President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) for 2024-2025 and will serve as President in 2026-2027. Her research focus is expansive. She bridges basic, translational, and clinical science in critical pulmonary illnesses and organ dysfunction. She is the Principal investigator for the “Laboratory for Science and Translation in Critical Illness” (LSTCI) at Vanderbilt where she focuses on Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) — mechanisms of lung injury and repair, sepsis and non‐pulmonary organ dysfunction (e.g., acute kidney injury, delirium) in critically ill patients, as well as the use of translational models: cell culture, mouse models, human samples and clinical data. She is a “cure hunter” who utilizes novel phenotyping approaches and leverages electronic medical records (EMR) plus genetic/clinical datasets to assess why individuals differ in risk and outcomes. Her mission and vision are aligned with those of the AUA, and I am certain that her talk will be informative and inspiring. In addition to the Keynote Speaker, we will have the President’s Panel. One of our speakers is Dr. Elisa Crouse. She is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist (OB/GYN) and holds the title FACOG (Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists). She holds a Master of Science in Biochemistry from Vanderbilt University and BS in Nutrition & Dietetics from Purdue University and has a significant academic career within graduate medical education. She is the former Associate Dean for GME and Designated Institutional Official at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, where she oversaw numerous residency/fellowship programs. In 2025, she became Senior Vice President, Institutional and Program Accreditation at the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), where she guides accreditation of sponsoring institutions and programs across specialties. She is recognized for leadership and teaching awards related to residency education and is known for bridging clinical practice and medical-education leadership in GME. She influences how training programs across the U.S. are accredited and structured. As with Dr. Bastarache, her mission and vision are aligned with those of the AUA, and I am certain that her talk will also be informative and inspiring. We certainly will have additional speakers. I suggest that you go to our website and see what exciting talks, panels, and workshops await and stay tuned for more speaker bios as the meeting nears. In four months, our Annual Meeting will be in Seattle, Washington, March 27 – 29, 2026! As you know, we will be hosted by University of Washington Medicine and held at the University of Washington Husky Union Building (HUB). Our accommodations will be at Graduate by Hilton Seattle. The host program has ensured an engaging and exciting program. The AUA Board Chairs have promised innovative and engaging sessions. I look forward to your continued participation. Respectfully submitted, Author
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