Andrology fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago
July 1 – July 31 of the following year
The Andrology fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago was founded in 1994 with the mission to populate urology residency programs with teaching faculty, and that mission continues to this day. We have educated many Andrology faculty and division chiefs in programs in the United States and around the world, who enjoy deeply satisfying careers in Andrology clinical care, education, research, and innovation, and contributing substantially to the present and future of our field.
Faculty:
Sam Ohlander (Division Chief): completed his residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago in urology and fellowship in Andrology at Baylor. His interests include male reproductive medicine and surgery, erectile dysfunction, and the aging male.
Craig Niederberger: completed his residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago in urology and fellowship in Andrology at Baylor. He was lead editor of the 4th and 5th editions of Infertility in the Male, Co-Editor in Chief of Fertility and Sterility from 2011 to 2021, General Program Chair of the 67th annual meeting of the ASRM in 2011, and has served as president of SSMR and SMRU. His interests include male reproductive medicine and surgery, engineering, and innovation.
Mahmoud Mima: completed his residency at Ibn Roshed and Al-Razi Hospital, Aleppo, Syria and fellowship in Andrology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His interests include male reproductive medicine and surgery, and erectile dysfunction.
Lawrence Ross: is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Urology at UIC, where he served as Department Head for 17 years. Prior to his recruitment to UIC he was Chair of Urology at Michael Reese Hospital and Professor of Urology at the University of Chicago. He is recognized as one of the early founders of the specialty of Male Reproduction and Microsurgery. He has been active in organized medicine culminating in his election as President of the American Urological Association. He was President of the SMRU and is the recipient of numerous awards and special recognitions for his contributions in Andrology. He founded the Andrology fellowship at University of Illinois at Chicago in 1994.
Gail Prins: completed her doctorate in reproductive physiology with an emphasis in Andrology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a research fellowship in Urology at Northwestern University Medical School. She has been director of the University Andrology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1996 and prior director of the IVF and Andrology laboratory at Michael Reese Hospital. She served as president of the American Society of Andrology and the Society for Basic Urologic Research. Her interests include sperm cryopreservation and prostate disease.
Beatriz Peñalver: completed her doctorate in chemical and biomedical engineering at Northwestern University and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego. In 2019, she joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her interests include reproductive biology with her laboratory employing holistic approaches that integrate multiple datasets such as genomics and the microbiome using machine learning approaches.
Kimberlee Wilkens: is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design and a Faculty Research Specialist/Project Director for MAD Lab (Medical Accelerator for Devices Lab) housed within the University of Illinois at Chicago Innovation Center. In the UR*lab, she guides projects through the user-centered design process toward commercialization and aims to bring awareness to a designer’s impactful role in improving healthcare through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Charles Frisbie: completed his undergraduate in Finance and MBA at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Director of the Medical Device Labs at the University of Illinois at Chicago Innovation Center.
Alan Feinerman: received his Ph.D. in physics at Northwestern and at the University of Illinois at Chicago is in the Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Civil and Materials Engineering, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Departments in the College of Engineering and in the Urology department in the College of Medicine. He was the 2011 University of Illinois at Chicago Inventor of the Year and 2013 Innovator of the year. His research interests span advanced thermal insulation, materials science, and a variety of medical devices.
Michael Young: completed his residency at Loyola University. In urological practice he invented, secured intellectual property, and commercialized 2 medical devices prior to coming to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he serves as Director of Urology Innovation in the Department of Urology.
Medical curriculum:
The fellow learns and practices all aspects of male reproductive medicine and surgery and erectile dysfunction with an emphasis on the diagnosis and treatment of male infertility. Conditions and treatments include azoospermia due to spermatogenic dysfunction and microdissection testicular sperm extraction, obstructive azoospermia and microsurgical reconstruction, varicocele and microsurgical varicocelectomy, ejaculatory duct obstruction and transurethral resection, ejaculatory dysfunction and electroejaculation, hypoandrogenism and pharmacological treatment, and erectile dysfunction and prosthetic and medical treatment. The fellow may also spend time learning procedures in Dr. Prins’ Andrology laboratory in preparation for establishing testing and sperm processing in their future practice. The fellow will be involved in leading our journal club, monthly andrology meeting, participating in both clinical and basic research projects as well as educating and teaching residents and medical students.
Clinical and surgical training is performed in the new Specialty Care Building, a $250M State-of-the-Art facility with urology clinics and offices on the second floor and the outpatient surgicenter on the third. The Andrology laboratory is housed within the urology space in the Specialty Care Building.
Innovation curriculum:
Concurrently with the medical curriculum, the fellow engages in a structured innovation curriculum in the UR*Lab, an innovation laboratory housed within the University of Illinois at Chicago Innovation Center, a collaboration, education and incubation center that brings diverse faculty and learners from the Colleges of Medicine, Engineering, Architecture/Design/Arts, and Business together with university wide resources such as the Office of Technology Management to educate the modern interdisciplinary approach to innovation. The fellow learns while doing: problem identification; solutioneering with high level specification, product and market research, and intellectual property research; prototyping and testing with 3D printing, embedded microcontrollers, and materials; and filing an invention disclosure in preparation for securing intellectual property. The 13 month duration of the fellowship allows for a 1 month overlap between the incoming and graduating fellow so that the new fellow can see the full arc of the innovation curriculum from start to finish.