Retiring ITM founder leaves legacy of collaboration, discovery, friendship

Renowned physician-researcher Julian Solway, MD, goes emeritus this fall after a nearly 40-year career at the University of Chicago. During that time he secured more than $165 million in research funding, served thousands of patients, and launched the Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM), which has fueled the scientific innovations of hundreds of faculty and helped families receive cutting-edge care.

“UChicago provides the perfect environment to have a most fulfilling career,” said Solway, the Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine, Founding Director of the Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM), and outgoing Associate Dean for Clinical Science Research/Translational Medicine. “My own research primarily focused on asthma, but I’ve also dedicated myself to advancing the careers of others and scaling an institute to accelerate health research at UChicago and institutions all across Chicagoland.”

Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, Dean of the Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine, said Solway transformed UChicago’s physician-researcher environment with the ITM, which has been key to making scientific breakthroughs and accelerating findings into real-world applications.

“We’re so fortunate to have a leader like Julian pave the way for multidisciplinary research and programs supporting physician-scientists and scientists across departments,” Anderson said. “The discoveries that his initiatives helped fuel allow us to be at the forefront of medicine.”

Under Solway’s leadership, the ITM received more than $100 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program and expanded to six Chicagoland institutions, including RUSH University, Loyola University Chicago, Endeavor Health, Advocate Aurora Health, and the Illinois Institute of Technology along with UChicago. Their most recent renewal earned an almost perfect score, demonstrating ITM’s national reputation for accomplishment and vision.

“There is no better mentor in the universe,” said Lainie Ross, MD, PhD, who co-directed the ITM with Solway for 15 years before becoming the Inaugural Chair of the Department of Health Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester. “His incredible vision helped us think about how we could make our collective ideas a reality.”

Solway’s creativity and camaraderie led to several major initiatives, including The New Normal Campaign to increase awareness of and participation in health research. He also emphasized the importance of the “sociome,” the everyday factors in people’s daily lives – like exposure to green space, sunlight, noise, and violence – that can have huge health impacts. He mobilized teams to create a big data platform so that physicians can give patients more customized care.

“He’s published many important papers, but his biggest contribution is his cadre of trainees who are now all over the world improving the lives of other trainees and patients,” said Jeffrey J. Fredberg, PhD, Professor of Bioengineering and Physiology at Harvard University.

Solway attended the Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) MD Program in Health Sciences and Technology after graduating from MIT in electrical engineering. He joined UChicago in 1985.

Solway’s expertise in engineering and medicine set him apart, leading to innovative research and a commitment to mentorship so the next generation could be just as unique in the ideas they chose to explore. Donald P. Gaver, PhD, until recently Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University, credits Solway with encouraging the out-of-the-box thinking that shaped his career.

“I was an outlier,” said Gaver, a physicist and former Solway postdoc whose experiments linked physiology and physics. “Julian was awesome and let me explore. It was magic.”

Solway has published more than 225 peer-reviewed papers, editorials, reviews, and book chapters; spoken at events around the world; and held leadership roles at UChicago and nationally, including co-chairing the NIH CTSA Program Steering Committee. While his professional accomplishments kept him busy, Solway still made time for loved ones, performed in bands, and played the piano with colleagues at conferences.

“He never forgot that life has balance,” said Andrew J. Halayko, PhD, a former UChicago fellow and now Professor at the University of Manitoba. “If Julian Solway had time to referee his kid’s soccer game, then there was no excuse for me to say that I don’t have time to do anything but work.”

Solway’s colleagues said they cherish his humor, mentorship, and trademark “Julianism” phrases and questions that spark laughter and encourage people to think in new ways.

“I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next,” Ross said. “He has so many great talents.”