Dear Pitt students, faculty and staff,
I'm writing to share that Dr. Anantha Shekhar has made the decision to step down as Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine, effective June 30, 2027, or upon his successor's arrival. His letter to the health sciences community is below, and I encourage you to read it in full, as it reflects what these past six years have meant to him and to this institution.
Dr. Shekhar arrived in June 2020, in the earliest days of the pandemic, and what he and this community built since then is remarkable: our health sciences schools remain among the nation's top 10 in NIH funding, with School of Medicine funding up 25%; last year, these schools drove most of the University's record invention disclosures, patents and start-ups; and our partnership with ElevateBio and the BioForge, anchored by the largest single-project gift in the Richard King Mellon Foundation's history, has taken us from vision to reality.
After a sabbatical, Dr. Shekhar will return to the faculty and turn his attention to the translation and commercialization side of biomedicine by helping promising science find its way to patients.
Please join me in thanking Dr. Shekhar for his leadership and service to this University.
Many thanks,
Joan Gabel
Chancellor
University of Pittsburgh
A Special Message From Anantha Shekhar, MD, PhD
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I am writing to share that I have made the decision to step aside from my role as Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine, effective June 30, 2027, or as soon as my successor is in place. I have not reached this decision lightly. I arrived at Pitt in June 2020, in the early and uncertain days of the pandemic. Since then, I have found in this community the ambition, rigor and shared sense of purpose that drew me here. I have valued every part of our partnership in the work and what we have built together.
Much of our work has been shaped by the Plan for Pitt, the framework set by Chancellor Gabel and our Board of Trustees, which further allowed for a shared sense of purpose across our six health sciences schools.
When I think about where Pitt Health Sciences stood six years ago and where we are today, I feel tremendous pride. That pride is not in any single achievement, but in our collective accomplishments across our schools and in close partnership with UPMC. We have firmly secured and held our place among the nation’s top 10 recipients of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. School of Medicine NIH funding has grown by 25% since 2020, even as the federal research landscape has grown more uncertain than at any point in a generation. Our faculty have met that uncertainty with resilience rather than retreat, increasing grant submissions and clearly demonstrating, year after year, why this institution belongs among the nation’s leading research enterprises.
We have also shown that discovery and translation belong together. In 2025, our health sciences schools drove most of the University’s record invention disclosures, patents and startup formation. Our research and development expenditures surpassed $1 billion for the first time. The biotech ecosystem we set out to build, anchored by our partnership with ElevateBio, the BioForge, and the broader Hazelwood corridor, has moved from plan to reality, carried forward by a landmark gift from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the largest single-project gift in that foundation’s history. I believe it will define this region’s role as a life sciences leader for decades to come.
Our success has attracted donors, as evidenced by record-setting philanthropic dollars raised for the health sciences in partnership with Philanthropic and Alumni Engagement.
We have also invested in the people and places behind this work. We reimagined our curriculum for a new generation of clinicians. We opened the West Wing and its new learning spaces, brought the 7T magnet online, and completed long-needed renovations to Scaife and Salk halls. We launched new centers, institutes and programs, further propelling our discovery and translation to address the most significant biomedical challenges of our time, including vision restoration, space biomedicine, and regenerative medicine, to name a few.
We built an Office of the Ombudsperson because students should not have to navigate hard moments alone. We looked after the well-being of our scientists and clinicians because an institution that asks so much of its people owes them real support in return. And we deepened our ties to the neighborhoods around us through community partnerships because an enterprise of our size has an obligation to the city that hosts it.
I am extremely proud of today’s health sciences leadership, the colleagues who have guided this work since long before I arrived, as well as the new vice chancellors, deans, chairs and department and institute leaders who have joined more recently. Together, they have helped build what we now call the strength of six: our six schools increasingly working together as one. Leading through a global pandemic, a shifting federal funding environment, and the ordinary work of institutional change has asked more of this community than anyone could have anticipated. That we did not merely survive these challenges but grew and thrived because of them says a great deal about the people I have had the privilege to lead.
Following a sabbatical, I will return to the faculty, moving from building the infrastructure of discovery to creating pathways that are critical to carrying that discovery into the world. I want to spend this next chapter closer to the translation and commercialization side of biomedicine — helping to make certain that promising science finds the partners, capital and paths it needs to become a therapy, a device or a company that will improve the lives of people around the globe.
I have every confidence that my successor will inherit an enterprise built to compete at the highest levels, scientifically, clinically and educationally, with a leadership team and faculty capable of carrying this work forward with distinction. To everyone who has partnered with me for over six years, thank you. It has been the privilege of my career to serve this University and this region.
With gratitude and confidence in the road ahead,
Anantha Shekhar, MD, PhD
Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences
John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, School of Medicine