Krummel, 47, comes from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, where he has chaired the Department of Surgery for the last 4 1/2 years. He is also surgeon-in-chief at the affiliated University Hospitals and director of the Division of Surgery at the Pennsylvania State Geisinger Health System.

"I'm delighted that he has accepted our offer to be recommended for the chair of the Department of Surgery and chief of surgery at UCSF Stanford Health Care ­ South Campus," Bauer said. "Dr. Krummel has had an outstanding career in clinical pediatric surgery and research and brings to the job superb teaching skills and leadership qualities."

The appointment still must go through the university's academic review process.

Krummel was selected after an eight-month national search by a 13-member committee co-chaired by Judith Swain, chair of medicine, and Bruce Reitz, chair of cardiothoracic surgery and acting chair of surgery. Reitz said the job attracted interest from a large pool of highly qualified applicants from around the country. Krummel seemed the best fit, he said.

"He is a superb clinical surgeon," said Swain. "He has an outstanding academic career with a particular interest in the area of robotics. He also has a lot of experience as a surgery chair at Penn State and is an experienced leader. So he had all the ingredients we were looking for. Personally, everyone liked him very much."

Reitz noted that Krummel is a member of the American Board of Surgery, the certifying group for surgeons - an important national leadership post that hasn't been held recently by a faculty member at Stanford.

Krummel said it will be difficult to part from his friends in Hershey, Pa., where he has spent the last eight years, but he is looking forward to moving to Stanford and the Bay Area, where he has some ties.

"It's a fabulous medical school, and I think the UCSF Stanford merger creates incredible opportunities. I have lots of colleagues and friends in both places. I'm also very interested in the Silicon Valley piece, with our work in robotics and virtual reality," he said.

Krummel has lectured internationally on the use of virtual reality in medical education, an interest that came out of his desire to improve teaching methods at Penn State, he said. He helped develop a virtual hospital there, where students could operate without actually touching a patient. "It makes sense as a concept, because it makes education better, safer and less expensive," he said.

He also took it upon himself, when he became the department chair at Penn State, to take management classes on the side at Harvard and at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Krummel said he already has Stanford's Graduate School of Business catalog on his desk and is investigating the possibilities here. "If you accept the responsibility of managing a department, which is a big enterprise, you might as well try to learn something about a core of knowledge that is out there about dealing with real issues of management," he said. "It's actually pretty interesting."

Krummel's charge will be to enhance the reputation of the Department of Surgery and to represent Stanford surgery within the UCSF Stanford community. He said he is optimistic on both fronts. "I think it is a department with tremendous people and strengths. If you have a great bunch of people and can get them all to move in the same direction simultaneously, it's the proverbial irresistible force," he said.

Krummel is a longtime friend of Michael Harrison, UCSF professor of surgery and pediatrics, with whom he worked in 1985 as a fellow in fetal surgery. He said he already has spoken with Harrison and with Theodore Schrock, chair of UCSF's Department of Surgery, about plans to collaborate. "There is no question [Schrock] and I are committed to have the departments function in a meaningful fashion together," he said.

Krummel received his MD from the Medical College of Wisconsin and did his house staff training in surgery at the Medical College of Virginia. He had further residency training in pediatric surgery at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and has held research fellowships both at UCSF and at the Medical College of Virginia.

His research has focused primarily on fetal wound healing.

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