Outstanding patient care, cutting edge research and innovative medical education is focus of partnership
By Patrick Crowley FSU College of Medicine
When the stars align, great things happen. And this is the case for the burgeoning partnership between FSU Health, the FSU College of Medicine and Andrews Research & Education Foundation( AREF) in Northwest Florida, a pioneer in orthopedic sports medicine, research and education.
What formally began in August 2025 with an agreement for the FSU College of Medicine to assume sponsorship of AREF’ s two fellowships— one in Orthopedic and Sports Medicine and the other in Primary Care Sports Medicine— has exploded in less than 12 months to include the joint hiring of Fayez Safadi, Ph. D., FASBMR, AREF’ s chief scientific and innovation officer as well as the College of Medicine’ s director of Northwest Florida translational sciences and innovation, and an FSU College of Medicine courtesy faculty appointment for Mangesh Kulkarni, Ph. D., AREF’ s associate director of regenerative medicine. The partnership also includes offering electives for fourth-year medical students from the college’ s six regional campuses, and research collaborations for both faculty and students.
Although the partnership was solidified in 2025, the groundwork was laid four years prior, after meetings with Richard McCullough, Ph. D., FSU’ s president, Stacey Patterson, Ph. D., FSU’ s vice president for
Research, Alma Littles, M. D., dean of the FSU College of Medicine, and Ashton Hayward, president of AREF, a proud FSU alumnus and former mayor of Pensacola, Florida, from 2011 through 2018.
“ These are visionary leaders,” Hayward said of the FSU trio, as well as James Andrews, M. D., president and founder of AREF.“ They have a clear commitment to growth and innovation for advancing healthcare and research. This exciting new period of expansion with FSU Health coming online was huge for us, and we just saw tremendous opportunity to align our nationally recognized brands and the innovation we both stand for in education, research and academia.”
“ From the very beginning, our goal has been to partner with Andrews Research & Education Foundation to solve complex, real-world health challenges,” Patterson said.“ By combining the university’ s robust scientific infrastructure with the elite clinical expertise of AREF, we are creating a powerhouse of innovation. This partnership allows us to take discoveries from our labs and fast-track them directly to the patients who need them most, transforming healthcare delivery across Northwest Florida and beyond.”
22 FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY | COLLEGE OF MEDICINE