New chair of Michigan Medicine Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery

Mark E.P. Prince, M.D., has been appointed chair of the Michigan Medicine Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery by the University of Michigan Board of Regents, effective April 1, 2018.

A longtime member of the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery faculty, Prince has served as interim chair since July 2016. He has more than 20 years of high-level administrative experience, including director of the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Residency Program for 15 years, and chief of the Division of Head and Neck Oncology for the past decade. 

He also has served the department as associate chair for education since 2014 and the Medical School as assistant dean for graduate medical education (GME) since 2015. In this role, he provides leadership for Michigan Medicine’s GME programs and oversees the internal review process for residencies and fellowships.

He joined the Medical School faculty in 1996 as a lecturer in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and completed a fellowship in head and neck oncology. He left briefly in 1998, but returned to the Medical School in 2000 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 2008, and full professor in 2014. He has received numerous teaching awards, including the Frank Ritter Award for the Best Teacher in 2003, 2007 and 2010, the Token of Appreciation from Medical Students Award in 2011, and the Otolaryngology Mentor of the Year Award in 2012 and 2014.

Prince also is an active head and neck surgeon with a background in clinical, translational and bench research. In 2007, he led a team of scientists from the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center and Stanford University in the first report of the identification of cancer stem cells in head and neck cancer. He and his collaborators are investigating how to stimulate a patient's immune system to destroy these cancer stem cells in head and neck cancer. This seminal discovery has greatly contributed to Prince’s impressive body of work of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and several book chapters.

In 2017, he received the Dean’s Global Community Service Award for organizing and helping to lead a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, nurses and trainees who have established a unique outreach collaboration with the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana, Africa. The group has made numerous trips to Ghana to improve the educational and clinical care specialty of otolaryngology in that country.

His clinical and academic impact and contributions have been significant, to both Michigan Medicine and to the entire field of study and practice.