The University of Maryland School of Medicine just picked up $3 million to go hunting for two specific kinds of people: a physician-scientist who knows how to get gene and cell therapies out of the lab and into the clinic, and a surgeon who can operate on the most complicated newborn hearts in the country.
The money is coming through the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative Fund (MEIF), which kicked in $1.5 million in matching funds. UMSOM matched it with another $1.5 million of its own, and the combined $3 million will fund two new endowed professorships.
Two Chairs, Two Very Different Skill Sets
The first is the Golisano Foundation Professorship in Targeted Gene and Cell Therapy Innovation. UMSOM is looking for a senior physician-scientist with real technology transfer chops, someone who can take promising gene and cell therapy research and actually push it toward commercialization rather than letting it stall out in a journal. That’s been the sticking point for a lot of academic research in this space, and it’s exactly the kind of hire Maryland needs if it wants to keep pace in gene therapy.
The second is the Golisano Foundation Professorship in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, based in the Department of Pediatrics and the UM Golisano Children’s Hospital. This one is aimed at recruiting a surgeon-scientist who specializes in complex neonatal cardiac surgery, a subspecialty where the pool of qualified people is genuinely small and every hospital system is competing for the same handful of names.
What the Leadership Is Saying
“These professorships strengthen UMSOM’s capacity to translate gene and cell therapy research and complex pediatric cardiac care into improved patient outcomes,” said Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, UMSOM Dean and Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Dr. Steven J. Czinn, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Director of the UM Golisano Children’s Hospital, put it more simply: “Physician-scientists play a unique role in advancing pediatric medicine because they are the link between the bedside and the laboratory.”
And Dr. Bert W. O’Malley Jr., President of the University of Maryland Medical Center and Executive Vice President of the Academic Health Division, framed it as the whole point of the exercise: “The future of pediatric medicine will be defined by our ability to translate scientific discovery into life-saving care.”
Where the Money Comes From
Both professorships trace back to a single gift: philanthropist Tom Golisano donated $50 million to UMB in October 2025, the largest gift in the university’s history. What’s happening now is that gift getting leveraged. State matching dollars and university funds are turning part of that donation into a permanent, endowed position that keeps paying for recruitment year after year instead of running out.
It’s also part of something bigger than UMSOM. This MEIF cycle handed out $17.7 million across four Maryland institutions, which tells us Annapolis is still treating biotech and life sciences talent as an economic development priority, not just a line item in a university budget.
Why It Matters
The interesting part here isn’t really the dollar figure. It’s what the money is actually for. Maryland doesn’t have a shortage of good science or good institutions. What it’s always had to fight for is the specific people who can turn that science into something patients actually benefit from, whether that’s a therapy that reaches the clinic or a surgeon who can save a baby other hospitals would turn away. An endowed chair is a long-term recruiting tool. It’s how you convince someone to build a career in Maryland rather than elsewhere, and it’s a small but real signal that the state’s biotech ecosystem is still investing in the right people, not just the lab space and the funding rounds.
