Vikhyat (Vik) Bebarta, MD was recently appointed Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.  Dr. Bebarta is also the Founding Director of the CU Center for COMBAT Research and the George B. Boedecker, Jr. and Boedecker Foundation Endowed Professor at the School of Medicine.

The Institute of Integration of Medicine & Science (IIMS) is proud of Vik as a 2010 recipient of a pilot project award during our first cycle of Clinical and Translational Science Award funding.  At that time, he was Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at San Antonio Military Medical Center and an officer at Lackland Air Force Base.  His research project was entitled “Cobinamide: Evaluation of a new cyanide antidote in a critically ill swine model of acute cyanide toxicity.”  The results of this work were published in 2014 with Vik as first author (Annals of Emergency Medicine 64:612-619, 2014).  Moreover, the IIMS pilot project led to downstream funding of Dr. Bebarta’s grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Office of the Air Force Surgeon General.

In Dr. Bebarta’s reply to a recent note of congratulations from Dr. Clark, he said:  “Thank you for the kind note and support. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve and excited about what’s ahead for our team and for CU.  My research career was launched while I was active duty with that small UT IIMS award, and the rest is history.  Thanks for what you and your team are doing for the community!”

The IIMS is proud to use our pilot grant program not only to fund competitive science, but also to promote the careers of our investigators.