New chair of pediatrics on Jacksonville campus

Longtime professor and prolific neonatology researcher Mark L. Hudak, M.D., is the new chair of the pediatrics department at the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville.

The pediatrics department is the largest within the UF College of Medicine-Jacksonville and has specialty clinics and pediatric centers across Northeast Florida.

“The University of Florida College of Medicine–Jacksonville is privileged to have Dr. Mark Hudak as the new chairman of pediatrics and looks forward to great accomplishments from him and his department as he assumes his new role,” Daniel R. Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., vice president for health affairs and dean of the college wrote in an email to faculty.

Hudak succeeds Thomas Chiu, M.D., M.B.A., who stepped down as chair but remains on faculty.

“It is an extraordinary privilege to have been given this opportunity. I am humbled to be succeeding Dr. Tom Chiu, whose vision and innovation over more than 20 years have resulted in tremendous growth of our clinical, educational, and research missions,” Hudak said. “So I feel a very keen responsibility to our faculty, staff and partners and certainly to the patients and the community we serve.”

Hudak said he wants to expand the educational mission and the clinical quality and depth of the department. He also envisions growth of existing partnerships and creation of new collaborations as essential for augmenting the research and discovery missions of the department.

Hudak joined the UF College of Medicine–Jacksonville in 1995 as a professor of pediatrics and chief of the division of neonatology. He has been associate chairman of the pediatrics department since 2007 and is also the college’s assistant dean for managed care.

Hudak earned his medical degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, where he also completed his pediatrics residency and a fellowship in neonatology. Hudak was on faculty at Johns Hopkins for six years and was an associate professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo for five years before moving to Jacksonville.

He is the site principal investigator for the NIH National Children’s Study at Baker County, and was named the first Robert C. Nuss Researcher/Scholar of the Year in 2011.

Hudak is a past member of the FDA Pediatric Advisory Subcommittee and the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs and is often consulted by the FDA for his expertise on issues related to drug therapy and clinical trials in neonates and children.