College News

On July 18, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences welcomed incoming students from the Colleges of Medicine and Dentistry during a pair of White Coat Ceremonies, celebrating the beginning of their journeys into education and service.

The vagus nerve, which takes a long, winding path from the brain to the large intestine and branches out to several organs along the way, is increasingly viewed as a potential key to the treatment of multiple medical and mental health conditions.

Dr. Michael S. Cookson, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Urology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, as well as the holder of the Donald D. Albers Endowed Chair in Urology, the University of Oklahoma David Ross Boyd Professorship, and the inaugural Associate Chief Physician Executive for OU Health’s Stephenson Cancer Center, has been elected as a Trustee of the American Board of Urology (ABU). His six-year term began on March 20, 2025. Dr. Cookson was nominated to the ABU by the American Urological Association (AUA).

In June, Huxing Cui, Ph.D., joined the OU Health Harold Hamm Diabetes Center as associate professor in the OU College of Medicine, Department of Cell Biology.  Prior to joining the OU Health campus, Cui was most recently an associate professor of neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of Iowa.

A University of Oklahoma researcher is the first to discover that the sequence of the genetic defect in the neuromuscular disease Friedreich’s ataxia isn’t always as uniform as previously thought, a breakthrough finding that could spark changes in how the condition is diagnosed and studied.