TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – After a national search, The Florida State University College of Medicine has hired Ricardo J. Gonzalez-Rothi, M.D., as professor and chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences.

Gonzalez-Rothi, whose leadership of the department will officially begin Jan. 1, currently is a professor of medicine and pharmaceutics at the University of Florida College of Medicine and is Chief of Medical Service at the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System.

“I am particularly interested in FSU’s emphasis on innovative ways of preparing a new generation of physicians trained with the needs of the public in mind,” Gonzalez-Rothi said. “We need scientifically well-trained doctors who are prepared to function with safety and confidence in a health system which has become increasingly technically complex.”

Gonzalez-Rothi brings a wealth of teaching, practice, research and leadership experience to the Florida State College of Medicine, where he replaces interim chair Harold Bland, M.D. Bland will continue in his role as professor and pediatrics education director.

For 25 years Gonzalez-Rothi, who was born in Cuba and is a graduate of Cornell University and the New York University School of Medicine, has volunteered as a physician in an evening rural health clinic. He is a charter member of the UF College of Medicine’s Society of Teaching Scholars, recognizing faculty members who have excelled in teaching excellence and educational scholarship.

In 2009, he received the UF Department of Medicine Excellence in Teaching Award for Medical Students, Residents and Fellows. Gonzalez-Rothi is a fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians.

“I am very excited to welcome Dr. Gonzalez-Rothi to the College of Medicine,” said Dean John Fogarty, M.D. “He is an exemplary teacher and scholar who will bring great passion and energy to his role as chair of Clinical Sciences and as a member of the teaching faculty.

“His background and interests are a great mission fit for the college as we prepare the next generation of physicians for practice in rural and underserved communities in Florida.”

Following completion of his medical degree at NYU, Gonzalez-Rothi completed residency training in internal medicine and a fellowship in pulmonary medicine, both at the University of Florida Shands Teaching Hospital.

He said he is eager to devote more time to medical student education and educational leadership.

“I find it greatly appealing to be in an environment where innovation and bold approaches to learning and teaching are embraced in the context of a primary care platform,” Gonzalez-Rothi said.

“While taking students to remote villages in Yucatan, or to area migrant farmworker health fairs, I have come to appreciate the complex unnatural causes that conspire to create health disparities,” he said. “I have ideas of how to integrate these economic and socio-cultural issues with the education of our future physicians.”