A vital part of Anderson’s duties will be leadership of UChicago Medicine’s efforts to enhance community health, health equity, and access to care for communities in Chicago’s South Side and beyond.

“I am thrilled and humbled to join the University of Chicago community, and look forward to the opportunity to work across the University and the South Side to promote biomedical discovery, education and health,” Anderson said.


After receiving his undergraduate degree in biology with honors from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, Anderson earned a Ph.D. in physiology and an M.D. from the University of Minnesota. At Stanford University, he completed an internal medicine residency and fellowships in cardiology and clinical cardiac electrophysiology, before joining Vanderbilt’s medical faculty in 1996. He moved to the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in 2005 and served as chairman and department executive officer of internal medicine in addition to leading Iowa’s Cardiovascular Research Center.

“We are delighted that Mark Anderson will bring his inspired leadership and deep experience to this mission.”

Anderson’s scholarly work, commitment to education and medical leadership have earned international recognition, and he is a leading expert on the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure. His research is focused on the role of the calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II in heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias, which are a common cause of sudden cardiac death. He has published more than 160 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and book reviews, has given invited talks across the United States and in more than a dozen nations, and has been included over many years in the Castle and Connolly listing of the top doctors in the U.S. In 2017, Anderson was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

In his leadership roles at Johns Hopkins, Anderson oversees more than 700 full-time faculty members and clinicians across 18 academic divisions, nearly 3,000 staff members and trainees, 300,000 clinic visits, and an annual research portfolio of more than $200 million in the last year. At Johns Hopkins, Mark led the Department of Medicine’s efforts in securing philanthropy, raising approximately $20 million to $40 million annually.

In a message announcing the news to the UChicago community, Alivisatos thanked Executive Vice President Kenneth Polonsky for his leadership of the University of Chicago Medical Center, the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine. Polonsky will become Senior Advisor to the President at the end of September 2022 and will remain a tenured faculty member at UChicago.

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