UNMC: A decade of growth

On Jan. 1, 2010, who could have known how this decade would transform the state’s only public academic health science center? Back then, no one was talking about Ebola, the tsunami of construction projects was at low tide and governance documents to formally create Nebraska Medicine were still on the horizon. As the medical center enters a new era, UNMC Today looks back at some of the events that defined the decade and transformed the state’s economic engine and its only public academic health science center.

In 2010, the ribbon was cut on the Center for Nursing Science.

2010

The decade kicked off with the launch of several important programs. To meet the demand for family physicians in rural Nebraska, UNMC and the University of Nebraska at Kearney established the Kearney Health Opportunities Program (KHOP). A UNMC Center for Staphylococcal Research was approved to bring researchers and clinicians together to develop treatments for staph infections. And UNMC welcomed its first High School Alliance class, a partnership between UNMC, metropolitan area school districts and an educational service unit.

Also in 2010:

• UNMC opened the Home Instead Center for Successful Aging to reunite the sections of geriatric medicine and geriatric psychiatry, expand research and patient care, improve the education infrastructure and provide outreach facilities to enhance successful aging.
• In a unique partnership between UNMC and Northeast Community College, the J. Paul and Eleanor McIntosh College of Nursing in Norfolk opened to house a UNMC College of Nursing Division.
• Thanks to Omaha philanthropists Ruth and Bill Scott, UNMC opened the Center for Nursing Science.

2011

The Harold M. and Beverly Maurer Center for Public Health opened 2011.

The Harold M. and Beverly Maurer Center for Public Health opened in May, giving the College of Public Health a home on the UNMC campus. Only five months after moving into its new $15 million building, the college was granted accreditation by the Council on Education for Public Health and became a full member of the Association of Schools of Public Health. UNMC also celebrated the dedication of the Ruth and Bill Scott Student Plaza.

Also in 2011:

• Bradley Britigan, M.D., began serving as the new dean of the UNMC College of Medicine.
• UNMC received a $9 million National Institutes of Health Center Grant to investigate the now chronic nature of HIV infection and its interaction with aging.
• Jennifer Larsen, M.D., began serving as the vice chancellor for research.
• Juliann Sebastian, Ph.D., began serving as dean of the UNMC College of Nursing.
• UNMC physicians, allied health practitioners and scientists formed the Nebraska Neuroscience Alliance in an effort to better serve people with developmental and degenerative diseases of the nervous system.
• Susan Swindells, M.B.B.S., was a co-investigator for a study that the leading journal, Science, deemed the “Scientific Breakthrough of 2011” and that researchers said could lead to the end of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

2012

UNMC Chancellor Harold Maurer, M.D., announced plans to step down as chancellor in 2013 and take on a new role in the department of pediatrics, as well as work with the University of Nebraska Foundation to lead fundraising efforts for a new cancer center campus. In actuality, Dr. Maurer stayed on until his successor came on board in 2014.

Also in 2012:

• H. Dele Davies, M.D., began serving as vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of graduate studies at UNMC.

2013

From left, Stanley Truhlsen, M.D., and his wife, Dorothy, at the ribbon cutting of the Stanley M. Truhlsen Eye Institute in 2013.

UNMC leaders cut the ribbon on the Stanley M. Truhlsen Eye Institute, a $20 million, 54,536-square-foot facility that combined state-of-the-art diagnostic medicine with the latest advances in clinical research. In addition, UNMC razed Swanson Hall (the former Children’s Memorial Hospital) to make way for what is today the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center.

Also in 2013:

• The NU Board of Regents approved a joint master’s/doctoral program in biomedical informatics.

  UNMC’s Genome Engineering Core facility launched TALENs, a new gene editing service that researcher C.B. Gurumurthy described as protein tools that work like custom-made DNA cutting scissors. Sound familiar? Dr. Gurumurthy would later introduce the world to CRISPR and Easi-CRISPR gene editing which has an entire page devoted to the technology on Wikipedia.

2014

Rick Sacra, M.D., embraces his wife following his release from the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.

After 10 years of preparation and drills, the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit team rose to the challenge when the U.S. State Department sent them an American doctor who was working in West Africa when he tested positive for the Ebola virus. Three weeks later, the unit’s first patient — Rick Sacra, M.D., — left the medical center campus, virus free. In all, three Ebola patients — Rick Sacra, M.D., Ashoka Mukpo, and Martin Salia, M.D. — were sent to the Biocontainment Unit after contracting the disease. Since then, UNMC and Nebraska Medicine have taken a leading role in training other health care workers across the U.S. and around the world in dealing with infectious diseases.

Also in 2014:

Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., was named chancellor of UNMC shortly after this visit to campus in 2013.

• On Feb. 1, Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., became the eighth chancellor of UNMC.
• The University of Nebraska Board of Regents approved the Center for Reducing Health Disparities in the College of Public Health.
• Janet Guthmiller, D.D.S., Ph.D., began serving as the new dean of the College of Dentistry.
• Ali S. Khan, M.D., M.P.H., formerly a senior administrator with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, began serving as the new dean of the College of Public Health.
• UNMC recognized two longtime advocates and donors by renaming the pharmacy building: the Joseph D. & Millie E. Williams Science Hall.
• UNMC and Nebraska Medicine entered into an agreement with Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital to provide physician and academic services at its new Madonna rehabilitation and long-term care hospital near Village Pointe in Omaha. The Omaha site also became the primary training site for a new UNMC-supported residency program in physical medicine and rehabilitation, the first such program in Nebraska and one of the few in the upper Midwest region.

2015

Dean Kyle Meyer, Ph.D., at a 2015 event marking the creation of the UNMC College of Allied Health Professions.

In July, the UNMC School of Allied Health Professions became an independent UNMC college — joining medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy and public health. Kyle Meyer, Ph.D., who had led UNMC’s allied health programs since 2006, became its founding dean.

Also in 2015:

• Based on its role in the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the World Health Organization made UNMC a partner in its Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
• UNMC establishes Nebraska’s first physical medicine and rehabilitation department.
• UNMC/Nebraska Medicine, in collaboration with Emory University in Atlanta and Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City, received a $12 million grant by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish and co-lead the nation’s National Ebola Training and Education Center (NETEC). The three academic institutions partner with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support the training of health care providers and facilities on strategies to manage Ebola and other emerging infectious diseases.
• After three years of planning and activity, the $19 million Health Science Education Complex opened at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. The UNMC/UNK partnership enabled allied health programs to expand to Kearney and welcomed new graduate nursing and expanded undergraduate nursing opportunities.

2016

From left, UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., chair of the Nebraska Medicine board, University of Nebraska Regent Jim Pillen and Bruce Lauritzen, member of the Clarkson Regional Health Services Board, sign the governance documents in 2016 formally creating Nebraska Medicine.

In June, in what UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., called a “historic day,” the principal parties representing Nebraska Medicine, the University of Nebraska Board of Regents and Clarkson Regional Health Services added their signatures to the final governance integration documents that formally created Nebraska Medicine.

Also in 2016:

• Karoly Mirnics, M.D., Ph.D., began serving as director of the Munroe-Meyer Institute.
• The Lauritzen Outpatient Center, including the Fritch Surgery Center, opened to the public.
• Virtual Incision Corp., a company founded by faculty members at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and UNMC, announced the successful first-in-human use of its miniaturized robotically assisted surgical device.
• The Urban Health Opportunities Program, a collaboration between the University of Nebraska at Omaha and UNMC, was launched to help address a need for medical professionals with diverse backgrounds.
• The ribbon was cut on the UNMC Center for Drug Discovery and Lozier Center for Pharmacy Sciences and Education.
• UNMC/Nebraska Medicine was awarded $19.8 million by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop a Training, Simulation and Quarantine Center to teach federal health care personnel procedures in treating highly infectious diseases and to create a place to monitor persons who have received a high-risk exposure to a highly infectious disease, such as Ebola.
• In October, the ribbon was cut on a redesigned and expanded Center for Healthy Living.

2017

Pamela Buffett and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the 2017 opening event for the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center.

Joe Biden, former two-term vice president who headed a national Cancer Moonshot Task Force, served as the keynote speaker at the ribbon cutting and dedication of the $323 million Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, the largest project ever on the medical center’s Omaha campus.

Also in 2017:

• UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., added additional leadership duties, when he was appointed to also lead the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
• In an early phase human clinical trial, UNMC scientists achieved a research milestone in Parkinson’s disease by testing a drug that transforms the immune system for diagnostic and therapeutic gain in Parkinson’s disease.
• The groundbreaking was held for the Dr. Edwin Davis & Dorothy Balbach Davis Global Center, the headquarters for UNMC’s iEXCEL℠ initiative, which features advanced simulation clinical settings and virtual immersive reality technology to help transform how health science education and clinical care is delivered through competency-based learning and assessment. The building also will house the Global Center for Health Security, the umbrella for several integrated, federally funded programs that provide highly specialized training using simulation and quarantine, as related to responding to emerging infectious diseases and biopreparedness on the global stage.
• A UNMC study showed how highly popular, custom genetically engineered animal models are easily generated using a new, patent-pending technology called Easi (Efficient additions with ssDNA inserts)-CRISPR.
• The Board of Regents approved a master’s degree in genetic counseling, the first of its kind in Nebraska.

2018

A 2019 ceremony marked the start of renovations to the Munroe-Meyer Institute’s new home. The board of regents approved the move in 2018.

The Board of Regents approved the move and rebuilding of the Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation from its existing location on the UNMC Omaha campus to the former First Data building on Pine Street, located near the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Scott Campus.

Also in 2018:

• The UNMC campus continued its focus on sustainability, announcing the largest rooftop solar installation system in Nebraska. The 1,487 solar panels — placed atop the Sorrell Center, the Truhlsen Eye Institute, and the Maurer Center for Public Health the following year — generate up to 500 kilowatts of solar-powered electricity to help power UNMC.

2019

In a major collaborative effort, researchers at UNMC and the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University announced that they had for the first time eliminated replication-competent HIV-1 DNA — the virus responsible for AIDS — from the genomes of living animals. The study, reported online July 2 in the journal Nature Communications, marked a critical step toward the development of a possible cure for human HIV infection.

Also in 2019:

Devin Nickol, M.D., associate professor and associate dean for interprofessional education, at the 2018 event when six statewide UNMC locations were connected for the first time via iWalls.

• Keith Olsen, Pharm.D., was named dean of the College of Pharmacy.
• The campus ceremonially broke ground on its own campus welcome center — the Wigton Heritage Center — as well as launched the renovation of Wittson Hall and the McGoogan Library.
• The flip of a switch melted away 500 miles of the state and two time zones, when six statewide UNMC locations were connected for the first time via iWalls. The statewide iEXCEL event allowed faculty and students from Omaha, Lincoln (nursing and dentistry), Norfolk, Kearney and Scottsbluff to share ways in which they use the iWall to enhance medical education.