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New faculty

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Jonah C. Gunalda, M.D.

Dr. Jonah C. Gunalda, recently chief resident of emergency medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of emergency medicine.

After receiving his B.S. in biology from Mississippi College in 2010, Gunalda earned his M.D. at UMMC in 2014. He then did an emergency medicine residency at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

An active member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine and the Society of Academy Emergency Medicine, Gunalda has given five conference presentations and has authored or coauthored one peer-reviewed journal article and one scientific abstract. His research interests include quality improvement, patient satisfaction and match outcomes for emergency medicine.

Richard L. Hutchison, M.D.

Dr. Richard L. Hutchison, an experienced hand and plastic surgeon, has joined the UMMC faculty as an associate professor of surgery and director of the Plastic Surgery Hand Fellowship Program.

After receiving his B.S. from Northwestern University in 1978, Hutchison earned his M.D. at the University of Chicago Pritzker in 1983. He had a general surgery internship and research fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, from 1983-86, he had postgraduate training in general surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine, Camden, from 1986-88, and he completed a fellowship in plastic surgery at St. Louis University Hospitals, Missouri, from 1988-90.

Hutchison served in private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1990-93 and practiced for 13 years in Fairbanks, Alaska, before joining the Michigan State University, Lansing faculty as an assistant professor of surgery. He completed a hand surgery fellowship at Integris Baptist/University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, in 2011. Since 2011, he has served as an assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and as a hand and plastic surgeon in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics Truman Medical Center, Kansas City, Missouri.

A fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Hutchison is an active member of several professional societies, including the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and the American Association for Hand Surgery. He serves on national committees and has presented his research at national meetings. A journal reviewer for the Journal of Anatomy, HAND and the American Journal of Hand Surgery, he has authored or coauthored 24 articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications. His research interests include the diagnosis of hand problems and hand biomechanics.