Dr. Dana Zimmel
Greetings!
We’re confident 2024 is going to be a great year for us here at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. This past year has been an exceptional one for us, but as we all know, there’s no standing still. This year, we plan to build on some of our recent accomplishments. There are many, but among the highlights we’re proudest of from 2023 include:
- Rising two spots last spring to tie with two other veterinary colleges at No.7 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
- Launching our new open heart surgery program for dogs in August.
- Creating a new strategic plan based on the theme of “Transforming Through Innovation.”
- Obtaining support from the UF strategic funding initiative to create an AI-enabled digital imaging platform for veterinary medicine and One Health.
Our new strategic plan provides us with a blueprint for success across our missions. All of our goals, as well as the action plans to fulfill them, reflect our commitment to reimagining every aspect of our college through transformational and cross-cutting approaches to patient care, research and education.
It’s an ambitious plan, and we’re ready to go to work! To get there, we aim to nurture top talent to create a culture of employee well-being and fulfillment that underlies all we achieve and strive for. Although investing in our people has always been a strategic goal, we are committing even greater energy and time into creating a workplace culture that underscores the value of all of the members of our team.
We plan to implement cross-cutting innovations to facilitate a new era of data analytics and to harness the power of technology to revolutionize teaching and clinical service and make day-to-day life easier through automation. We also plan to reimagine the research enterprise as well as our educational program to build a national model for a “learning veterinary health care system.”
It’s that aspect of our strategic plan that I would like to talk more about in this column.
We recently obtained support from UF President Ben Sasse’s strategic funding initiative to develop a state-of-the-art, AI-enabled digital imaging platform through which we will collect, collate and analyze patient data. This $2.3 million project — $750,000 per year over three years — will facilitate the creation of a new data warehouse that will make use of digitized patient care information gleaned from patient records from our robust caseload, enabling us to embed research into clinical operations to treat diseases like cancer.
No matter what questions we want to ask, we will have a whole data enterprise to draw from, allowing us to transform the possibilities for clinical practice and creating a path for the development of precision medicine.
Our new associate dean for research and graduate studies, Dr. Janet Robishaw, helped craft our funding proposal and her efforts will be critical in driving the project forward. A passionate team of internal collaborators from across disciplines are involved as well, along with key leadership from the UF Health Information Technology Division. I can’t wait to see where this project will lead, but there’s no doubt this new data enterprise will create a perpetual loop of research discovery and clinical quality improvement, not to mention positioning our college as a leader in the use of AI to advance research in animal health. In other news, I want to again note Dr. Robishaw’s addition to our leadership team and welcome her. I also want to thank Dr. David Pascual for his five years of service in the role of associate dean for research and graduate studies. Dr. Pascual moved back into a faculty role in late summer. Dr. Pascual helped guide research planning and operations during some difficult years and I am so grateful for his leadership and insights.
Additionally, I’m thrilled to welcome Dr. Charles Vite, who came to UF from the University of Pennsylvania last fall to join our team, as the new chair of our department of small animal clinical sciences. I want to acknowledge the efforts of Dr. Caryn Plummer, who held the role of interim chair after Dr. Chris Adin stepped down from the position in 2022. Dr. Plummer kept the department moving forward in important ways during that time and the transition, and I will always be grateful for her help.
We always have more news than I can capture in a column, but I wish everyone a wonderful 2024 and am grateful to everything you each contribute to your colleagues, your college and the broad veterinary community of which we are all a part.
With gratitude,
Dana N. Zimmel, D.V.M.
Professor and Dean
