Robert D. Simari, MD, served as executive vice chancellor for the University of Kansas Medical Center from January 2018 to April 2024. A 1986 alumnus of the KU School of Medicine, Simari served as executive dean from March 2014 through August 2019, providing oversight and leadership to the school’s three campuses in Kansas City, Wichita and Salina.

As executive vice chancellor, Dr. Simari oversaw the education, research, patient care and outreach missions of the University of Kansas schools of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions, which have a total annual enrollment of more than 3,500 students. He was responsible for a workforce of more than 1,700 faculty and more than 3,500 staff; a significant research enterprise with funding of nearly $200 million; and activities in every county in the state of Kansas. Dr. Simari also served on the LCME for 6 years including one year as chair.

When Dr. Simari returned to his alma mater as dean, he outlined his mission to improve the health of all Kansans. With four-year campuses in Salina (smallest four-year medical campus in North America) and Wichita and a long tradition of generating rural primary care physicians, the school was recognized as one of the top two schools in developing rural and primary care physicians. Under his leadership as EVC, he established a nursing school and a Rural Health Research Center in Salina, helped establish the All of Us Program to bring personalized medicine to rural communities, and expanded the successful Kansas Medical Student Loan Program to include specialty training.

Prior to joining KU, Dr. Simari served as vice chair for the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases and co-principal investigator of the Center for Translational Science Activities at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he also served as a physician scientist, cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. Dr. Simari’s laboratory made fundamental discoveries in the areas of thrombosis and identification of vascular stem cells, and he led the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-funded Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network from 2008 to 2021.

Dr. Simari earned his baccalaureate degree from the University of Notre Dame and his medical degree from the University of Kansas. He completed his internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and fellowships in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan.

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