This announcement was sent on behalf of Dr. Michael Avidan.
I am proud to announce that Professor Anne Drewry, MD, MS, Vice Chair and Division Chief of Critical Care Medicine, has been appointed the inaugural Llorin-Roa Professor of Anesthesiology, effective October 1, 2025. A formal installation ceremony will be held at a later date.
Dr. Drewry also serves as Executive Director of the Critical Care Telemedicine Center, leading system-wide innovations in critical care delivery.
This newly established professorship honors the legacy of Necita Llorin-Roa, MD, an Associate Professor Emerita of Anesthesiology who served as faculty at WashU Medicine for more than four decades. A renowned clinician and educator, Dr. Roa trained at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in the 1970s after graduating from the University of the Philippines Manila College of Medicine. Throughout her career, she cared for patients in St. Louis, endowed the Necita Roa Award—which recognizes a graduating resident for their citizenship, essential attributes, and contributions to the program—and supported global health initiatives for trainees. She led annual medical and surgical missions to under-resourced communities in the Philippines, exemplifying a lifelong commitment to service and education.
Dr. Drewry exemplifies the academic clinical excellence envisioned by Dr. Roa. Dr. Drewry is a visionary leader, an outstanding clinician, a dedicated educator and mentor, and an accomplished researcher. A graduate of Yale University and WashU Medicine, Dr. Drewry completed residency training in anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and returned to WashU Medicine for a critical care fellowship in 2011. She joined the faculty thereafter, steadily advancing to her current leadership roles.
As a forward-thinking leader, Dr. Drewry has played a major role in the transformation of critical care delivery across the BJC HealthCare system. She contributed substantially to the design and implementation of a comprehensive telemedicine-ICU network, expanded critical care coverage to 339 ICU beds across 14 hospitals, and championed multidisciplinary collaboration to improve outcomes for the sickest patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she orchestrated rapid system-wide critical care expansions, while maintaining clinical excellence and staff morale—efforts recognized by the 2021 COVETED Award and the 2023 Dean’s Impact Award.
Dr. Drewry’s scholarly work focuses on temperature-related immunologic outcomes in sepsis, and she has served as site principal investigator for major NIH-funded studies. She is deeply committed to medical education, supporting the nation’s largest critical care fellowship program and the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Training Program at Goldfarb School of Nursing.
Dr. Drewry’s combination of dedication, clinical expertise, and leadership makes her uniquely deserving of the Llorin-Roa Professorship, which will enable her to continue shaping the future of critical care medicine and academic anesthesiology.