Published on January 21, 2014 at 1:11 am Last update on January 21, 2014 at 1:11 pm

After a nine-month search by a committee including educators, health professionals and students, the University introduced Clay Johnston as the inaugural dean of the Dell Medical School on Tuesday morning.

Johnston, who studied at Amherst University, Harvard University and the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, is currently the associate vice chancellor of research and director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of CaliforniaSan Francisco School of Medicine. He will begin serving as dean March 1.

The Dell Medical School, which went into planning in 2012 and was named last year, is in the final states of design and is expected to receive its first class of students in 2016. President William Powers, Jr. said Johnston was selected in part because of his forward-thinking vision for the school.

We had a dozen fantastic people from around the country, Powers said. This really garnered a great deal of interest from some very high level people. [Johnston] is innovative and open and wants to help design a medical school in a new way. He is very interested in new forms of health care delivery, and he has worked and proven himself in the institute that he heads up in his ability to work with many stakeholders in a complex situation.

Johnston said he will try to use his role as dean to advance the way medical schools approach health care, which he believes should be more patient-centric.

I think medical health care is really at an important juncture right now, Johnston said. My vision is to create a medical school that really represents where health care should be going, not where its been. Thats the beauty of starting from the ground up and then being able to take a look at how health care is working, how medical centers are working and design them for the next century.

Unlike the six existing medical institutions within the UT System, which each have their own president, Powers said Dell Medical School will be a unit of the University.

Johnston, who plans to continue treating patients as dean, said all individuals involved in the Dell Medical School project have different expectations for his performance. He said he will be expected to deliver excellent care to patients, create multidisciplinary programs intended to advocate research and turn the school and research hospital into modes for economic development in the community. Johnston said one of the first challenges he faces will be prioritizing these objectives.

The school is going to do all of those things, but when? Johnston said. You cant do all of those things from day one or year one or even year five. So the biggest challenge is prioritizing amongst these critical goals and making excellent progress in all of these areas but managing the expectations so that people understand that it is impossible to grow this thing, even in five years, to the vision that all of us have for it.

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University appoints Clay Johnston as inaugural dean of Dell Medical School