o learn what Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., the new senior vice president for medical affairs and dean of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, expects from his new employees, listen to one of his favorite anecdotes: When President Lyndon B. Johnson visited the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he toured the facility and asked NASA employees what they did. Every single person—from secretaries to technicians to engineers—had the same response: “I’m sending a man to the moon.”

The new dean would like faculty and staff of the Miller School to answer similarly when asked what they do: “I’m contributing to the mission of the Miller School of Medicine.”

“Staff is absolutely essential for the success of our mission,” says Goldschmidt. “Everyone contributes.” As dean, Goldschmidt will hold regular meetings of small groups of people “where they can express their desires and dreams and share their opinions. I have to have the opportunity to meet the people I’m working with and for,” he says. “I really enjoy having dialogues with the people who work with me. I believe in building teams.

“It’s all about people. We need interaction in order to thrive.”

Feedback from faculty, trainees, and staff will help the new dean form his vision for the future of the Miller School of Medicine. Goldschmidt points out that he would not be a very good student if he did not study his subject carefully. So expect any changes at the Miller School to come effectively but carefully, after much deliberation. “I like to really discover the main strengths of a specific place,” he says. “It would not be a good strategy to come in with a preconceived radical plan.”

That isn’t to say he doesn’t have a clear vision of what he wants from the school. “There is not a second of my waking life that I am not thinking and dreaming of a strategic plan,” Goldschmidt says. “While I am committed to keeping an ambitious momentum, I also realize that delayed gratification is sometimes necessary.”

oldschmidt, 51, comes to Miami from Duke University, where he served as chair of the Department of Medicine. He is a native of Brussels, Belgium, who graduated summa cum laude from the Medical School of Brussels and trained at the Erasmus Hospital of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

Nicknamed “The Working Man” in graduate school for his notable dedication to his studies, Goldschmidt was a focused student—and a serious field hockey player—who finished first in his class.

His parents, who were teenagers in Brussels during World War II when Allied tanks drove through the city to liberate Belgium, strongly encouraged him to go to the United States to pursue medicine. “The tradition was to go to the U.S. if you wanted to seriously practice medicine,” Goldschmidt says. He didn’t come right away though—some intriguing things were happening in European medicine.

Right after graduate school, Goldschmidt became interested in the unusual ailments that were presenting in people coming from Zaire to Belgium—the first cases of human immunodeficiency (which were due to the then unheard of AIDS virus) in Europe. He decided to focus his studies on immunology and left Belgium to study at the University of South Carolina.

Goldschmidt’s mother—who passed away when he was a teenager—did not get to see her son practice medicine in the U.S., but “she was right,” he says. “This was the right place to go.”

After completing his studies in South Carolina and residency work at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, Goldschmidt began working in a research laboratory at The Johns Hopkins University. Later, he entered the clinical fellowship training program in cardiology at Hopkins and joined the faculty. After 11 years at Hopkins, during which time he directed the Henry Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Diseases, the Thrombosis Center, and the Bernard Vascular Biology Laboratory, Goldschmidt joined The Ohio State University to become director of the Heart and Lung Institute and the Division of Cardiology as well as serve as the John and Mildred Lumley Chair of Medicine, Cardiology.

Goldschmidt “built the Heart and Lung Institute from scratch,” transforming it into one of the largest research centers in the world focusing on heart and lung research. In four years, the Heart and Lung Institute grew to a seven-story facility with 30 principal investigators and more than 120 scientists devoted to research of diseases affecting the heart, lungs, and blood vessels.

In 2000 Goldschmidt left Ohio State for Duke University to become chief of the Division of Cardiology, Edward S. Orgain Professor of Cardiology, and professor of genetics, cell biology, and pathology. He became chair of Duke’s Department of Medicine three years later.

Under Goldschmidt, Duke’s Department of Medicine rose from eighth to third in National Institutes of Health funding. “What we did was to create a team of leaders within the department who were able to proliferate a philosophy of success. By creating clear expectations that were reachable by the faculty, everyone grew to become more productive, more effective, and more successful,” Goldschmidt says.

“It wasn’t solely the recruitment of new faculty. It was also the amplification of the intrinsic ability of the faculty that were already there to become more successful. I think that at the Miller School of Medicine, the same opportunity exists.”

Bringing in new talent and nurturing the talent that is already in place will help build “the connective tissue that extends and expands the strengths of programs exponentially,” says Goldschmidt.

In biological terms, connective tissue, or “cellular glue,” is the material between the cells of the body that gives tissues form and strength. It surrounds many organs, delivers nutrients, and supports, binds, and protects other tissues. In Goldschmidt’s vision, connective tissue, whether in the form of individuals or individual programs, is the glue that fosters and amplifies what’s best about the Miller School of Medicine.

Connective tissue of people and programs will form the basis for one initiative that Goldschmidt does intend to move forward quickly: the creation of a center for human genomics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines genetics as “the study of inheritance, or the way traits are passed down from one generation to another … Genomics is a newer term that describes the study of all the genes in a person, as well as interactions of those genes with each other and with that person’s environment.”

Goldschmidt wants to take the information from the human genome project, which identified all of the 20,000 to 25,000 genes in human DNA and determined the sequence variants of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, and combine it with the capabilities of the Miller School to create a far-ranging biotechnological powerhouse. “I don’t think we’ve capitalized enough on the scientific consequences of the human genome project,” he says. “This is one area that we’re going to enhance substantially.

“The exact form of the center will be tough to tell—it depends upon the amount of support we generate. But considering the generosity of the trustees and other Miami benefactors, we can shoot for a world-class team.”

As an investigator who was integrally involved in Duke’s multimillion-dollar Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Goldschmidt knows how powerful a well-operated, well-funded genome program can be: “I’ve experienced the impact of such an institute firsthand. The multifaceted approach allows science to move forward much more rapidly.”

The new center will knit together existing programs such as the Diabetes Research Institute, UM/Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and Bascom Palmer Eye Institute as well as foster existing programs in genetics, create some new programs, and bring in new talent. “It will be the reins by which various groups can connect. Broad-based science is extraordinarily helpful in building bridges among groups,” Goldschmidt says.

Cardiology will remain a focus for Goldschmidt as well. “It is still the greatest cause of not only death but also morbid-ity and disability that we have,” he says. “We have to make progress in cardiovascular disease. There’s a great hope that within 50 years we will have seen a major change in the epidemics of cardiovascular disease to the extent that prevention and perhaps maintenance of stability for the cardiovascular system is at reach. And I certainly want for the University of Miami to play a substantial role in that effort.”

Goldschmidt also intends to position the Miller School of Medicine as a leader in global health. “The geographic position of Miami—by the ocean, in between four continents but also, depending on how you draw the circles, not so far from the Far East and other Oriental destinations—provides an opportunity for the University of Miami to become a leader in what has become really one of the greatest advancing parts of medicine, which is global health of the world.”

Miami’s diversity will help with that goal. Many areas of the country are just now realizing that population demographics are changing. But “Miami is ahead of the curve. Much of the future has already arrived in Miami, where other places are just feeling the wind,” Goldschmidt says. The city’s ethnic and racial makeup enables researchers to study more populations and target their advances more specifically. “The learning is much more interesting when there are many, many different people,” he says.

On a personal level, the city’s diversity is immensely appealing to Goldschmidt. “I’m happiest in an environment with a lot of diversity—not only ethnic diversity but also diversity of religion, philosophy, social status. I’ve tried hard to understand why, but I think it has to do with degrees of freedom,” the dean says.

“An ideal society is one that is extraordinarily diverse. It’s consistent with my happiness to be surrounded by people who may be very different from me.”