Dreams and Dragonflies–Seeds of Hope
To our supporters–friends and relatives, We hope you are happy, healthy.

We are delighted to announce that this year’s Dreams and Dragonflies: Seeds of Hope fundraiser gala honored Dr. Edwin Cadman, the former dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine.

Proceeds will benefit the medical school’s research program and the recently established “Alana Dung Early Career Development Fund.” The endowed funds will support junior faculty at the medical school as they embark upon their careers.

Seed money is where research begins; it helps scientist set up their first labs and supports them if they have an idea they want to explore. Without it, the process of testing a new theory could take longer–delaying important findings that could improve diagnosis and treatment.

We first met Dean Cadman about two years ago. We left our meeting so impressed and inspired with Dr. Cadman’s vision which encompassed the building of a new state-of-the-art School of Medicine but also the revitalization of Kaka‘ako.

We learned that his hope was to see the medical school improve both the physical health of the state and its economic health by fostering the biotech industry and the creating of new jobs. Dr. Cadman envisioned the medical school being the nurturing place for the biotech industry. He looked toward additional research buildings being developed by the private sector, clustered around the core medical school, thereby creating public-private partnerships.

Here was a low-key, soft spoken and affable individual who possessed a big vision for Hawai‘i and who was able to effectively work within the community to convince the Legislature to fund the development of the 10 acre site in Kaka‘ako for the new medical school.

Today, due to his efforts, the medical school includes a cuttingedge education and administration building and a world-class research building, thereby, providing conference rooms, an auditorium and a medical library which are available to all members of the local community and to the greater bioscience campus/park. Rising from the industrial site occupied previously by garbage trucks, dilapidated warehouses and empty buildings is the new medical school embodying the architecture and art of the Islands, surrounded by Hawaiian medicinal plants and other native flora.

Besides continuing its outstanding education program, the medical school is becoming a research-intensive medical school. The medical school programs include the Asia Pacific Institute for Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, molecular genetics of reproductive and developmental biology, health disparities of Hawai‘i’s minority groups, drug discovery related to traditional healing plants, vaccines for AIDS and malaria, neurobiology focused on the molecular basis of behavior, and a clinical research center providing support for 80 clinical trials.

To become dean of UH’s medical school in 1999, Dr. Cadman left Yale after 13 years where he had served as chairman of internal medicine and professor of medicine at the medical school and chief of staff at Yale-New Haven Hospital. His goal was to make UH’s medical school one of the best in the country, with its own particular niche including research on health problems that plague Pacific Islanders.

Hawai‘i is so fortunate that Dr. Cadman came to Hawai‘i. He overcame many challenges—he rejuvenated a floundering medical school, assembled a cadre of prestigious researchers, built one of the nation’s best equipped medical schools on the $150 million Kaka‘ako campus, and established a course toward biotechnology and cutting-edge medical research that will pay dividends for the future.

Since resigning in February 2005 for health reasons, Dr. Cadman is serving as a tenured faculty member and in June, served as the conference chair of the Hawai‘i Bioscience Conference.

Interim UH President David McClain proclaimed, “There are few leaders in this university’s history that have made the difference that Ed has made to the medical school and our community.” The former acting dean of the medical school, Dr. Samuel Shomaker acknowledged that Cadman “has moved the medical school forward in very significant ways and is the one who had the vision of a research institution and launched us on that path.”

With much aloha,
Adelia and Steve