NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, FEINBERG SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

303 EAST CHICAGO AVENUE

John A. Kessler, M.D. Ward 10-185

Davee Professor of Stem Cell Biology 303 East Chicago Avenue
Chairman, The Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology Chicago, Illinois 60611-3078
& Clinical Neurological Sciences Phone: (312) 503-2775
Director, The Frances Evelyn Feinberg Clinical Fax: (312) 503-0872
Neuroscience Research Institute e-mail: jakessler@northwestern.edu

November 1, 2010

Search Committee for a New Dean and Vice President of Clinical Academic Affairs
University of Kentucky College of Medicine and UK Healthcare

To the Search Committee:

I am writing to express my interest in the position of Dean of the College of Medicine at the
University of Kentucky. To help familiarize you with my background, I will comment briefly about
my research and clinical accomplishments, my administrative experience and achievements, my
successes in fund raising, and my commitment to education.

My professional career has bridged between research in basic neurobiology and clinical neurology.
The spectrum of my publications reflects the duality of the career path that I chose. I have published
frequently in basic science journals including J. Neuroscience (20), PNAS (15), Science (3), Neuron
(3) and Nature (2), but I also publish frequently in clinical journals including Annals of Neurology
(6), Neurology (5), Stroke (4), Nature Clinical Practice Neurology (4) and numerous others. These
publications have collectively been cited 10,400 times. My early work focused on the basic biology
of neural growth factors, and on defining how these factors regulate neuronal phenotypic expression.
I was one of the early investigators of the biology of neural stem cells, with a particular focus on
defining mechanisms governing glial lineage commitment. My most recent work has focused on
developing techniques for using nanoengineered materials in combination with stem cells to repair
the damaged nervous system. Despite this commitment to basic research, I have remained an active
clinician and clinical educator throughout my career. I still do clinical teaching rounds with residents
and students for an hour every weekday morning and I run several clinical conferences. I am also the
national principle investigator for a gene therapy trial in painful diabetic neuropathy. It is my belief
that it will be necessary to bridge across disciplines for medical research and clinical medicine to
make the most fundamental advances, and my research efforts reflect my commitment to this
principle. I am a participant in a bionanotechnology research group (BRP grant), and the stem cell
center and grant that I direct include a cadre of materials scientists and engineers. I direct a Roadmap
training grant in which half of the mentors are in the school of engineering and half in the medical
school with a goal of providing cross-disciplinary training to young scientists. The duality of my
efforts has made me thoroughly conversant with the cultures of both the basic science community and
the clinical arena.

My administrative, organizational, and fiscal experience has been both diverse and extensive.
Relatively early in my career I became Director of the Kennedy Center at Albert Einstein College of
Medicine (AECOM), and at about the same time I became Chief of Neurology at Bronx Municipal
Hospital (Jacobi Hospital). I thus had responsibility for direction of both a basic research center and
a clinical service. In the late nineties a rupture between AECOM and the Health and Hospitals
Corporation of New York City prompted the city to seek a new partner to provide faculty for the
Bronx Medical Network of hospitals. Two colleagues and I organized a group to respond to the
city’s request for proposals, and we won the contract for providing all medical services to these
hospitals. As Treasurer of this organization I gained extensive experience with the nuances and
finances of all of the different clinical departments in the hospitals. This also greatly benefited
AECOM since most of the medical school’s clinical research is done at Jacobi Hospital, and we were
able to keep the hospitals in the network as training and research sites for the school. In 2000 I
became Chair of the Department of Neurology at Northwestern University. At that time the
Department was small, dispirited, and deeply in the red financially. The Department has been
profitable every quarter since I arrived. We have hired 42 new faculty members in the past 10 years,
and we have quadrupled the size of our research portfolio. We moved from being unranked to #13
this year on the US News rankings. The fiscal and organizational successes with the Department led
to my involvement in the fiscal affairs of both our faculty clinical practice foundation (NMFF) and
our flagship hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I Chair the investment committee for NMFF
which manages a portfolio of approximately $100 million. I joined the NMH investment committee
several years ago, and recently I became the Chair of the subcommittee responsible for a portfolio of
equity investments of approximately $0.6 billion. As indicated by my curriculum vitae, I am also the
Director of a Neuroscience Institute and a Stem Cell Institute. I thoroughly enjoy these
administrative responsibilities and feel fortunate that I have had the opportunity to couple them with
my research and clinical responsibilities.

Since the recruitment package that brought me to Northwestern only included sufficient funds for 5 or
6 new faculty recruits, raising funds became a priority for me. I have built the Departmental
endowment to approximately $65 million at present, and we have now received another $10 million
gift that will increase the portfolio to about $75 million when the bequest is finalized. Importantly we
have also been able to maintain about 300 days spendable cash in hand which, coupled with our
profitable clinical efforts, has allowed us to recruit so many new faculty members. I have also
traveled extensively throughout the country for Northwestern University to speak with alumni and
potential donors. The medical school has now incorporated into its fund raising efforts my
documentary movie about stem research, Terra Incognita, which recently aired on PBS and in
Canada, Europe, and Australia and which won a Peabody Award. My success with these efforts has
helped to convince me internally that I would enjoy the opportunity as a Dean to build the financial
base of a medical school.

I should also comment briefly about my commitment to education since the desire to shape residency
and student programs was the primary motivator for me to become a clinical chairman. I believe that
the educational mission of an academic medical center is sometimes undervalued and those who are
committed to it are sometimes not well recognized or rewarded. I believe that commitment to this
mission must be communicated by senior leadership so that it does not get lost in the demands of the
laboratory and the hospital. It is for this reason that I maintain my daily teaching sessions with the
residents and students which communicates to the entire Department that the mission is valued. I also
greatly enjoy teaching, so this time commitment is not onerous for me.

Thank you for the opportunity to present myself to your committee.

Sincerely,

John A. Kessler MD