My portfolio includes undergraduate medical education, research and faculty merits and promotions. I want us to be excellent... in the way we train our future physicians, in the way we conduct research, in the way we build careers for our faculty. My job is to provide the resources, support and opportunities to help make all these things a reality. At the end of the day, if I can move us forward in that direction, then I feel like I've given our students, faculty, and institution the support they truly deserve.

What do you enjoy about your work?

Making a difference in the professional lives of our medical students, faculty, graduate students, and staff. I feel like I am doing my job when a medical student tells me "this is what I dreamed medical school would be like…” or when a faculty member gets promoted to full professor… or when a researcher says he or she made a new discovery that could have an impact on human health. I enjoy the challenges and making things happen. It's a pleasure and privilege to be a part of all these successes.

Ann Bonham, Ph.D., UC Davis Health System Executive Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and professor of pharmacology and internal medicine, is a national leader in the field of central neural regulation of cardiovascular and respiratory functions and how gender, environmental pollutants, physiological changes and disease alter this regulation.

A member of the faculty for the past 18 years, she exemplifies the School of Medicine’s emphasis on combining research, education and mentoring as interwoven and inseparable missions. As executive associate dean, Bonham oversees UC Davis Health System’s research programs, focusing on high-impact discoveries, translational research, and interdisciplinary, collaborative research with public, private and industry partners. The education programs focus on undergraduate medical education; graduate student and postdoctoral training programs; and faculty academic programs. She is the program director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Med into Grad Initiative and chairs the Oversight and Governance committee for the NIH Roadmap Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) awarded to UC Davis.

An eminent scientist with a long history of federal funding, Bonham has experience on various National Institutes of Health advisory councils and serves as distributing editor of the Journal of Physiology. She has played a major role in the UC Davis’ expansion of basic biomedical sciences in pharmacogenomics, neurosciences, and membrane and vascular biology.

She has served as chair of the Department of Pharmacology where, over a two-year period, she rebuilt the department, increasing NIH funding by six-fold. She also has served as vice chair of research for the Department of Internal Medicine, associate chief of research for the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and acting chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. She was twice awarded the UC Davis Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching Science Basic to Medicine and was honored with the American Medical Women’s Association Gender Equity Award for providing a gender-fair environment for the education and training of women physicians.

Her extensive experience in mentoring scientists and junior faculty, especially women in research, has advanced many careers. She is acclaimed for her role in initiating training opportunities, mentoring women who have accepted positions in academics and industry, bringing together investigators to work toward common goals, and fostering collaborations with faculty and department chairs across disciplines.

Bonham earned a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University School of Medicine.