In Memoriam: Dr. Sid Khosla

“Dr. Khosla provided the UC ENT community with a unique passion, intellectual curiosity and gentleness of spirit that is all too rare,” says David Steward, MD, the Helen Bernice Broidy Professor and chair of the Department of Otolaryngology. “Indeed, it was the very essence of his “Sidness” that engaged his scientific colleagues, fellow clinicians and students, inspiring them to move beyond the mundane to achieve their own intellectual greatness.”

Khosla joined the College of Medicine faculty in 2004 after spending two years on faculty at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. While at UC, he also served as the director of the UC Center for Laryngeal Biomechanics and the UC Health Voice and Swallowing Center. For two years, he was the director of the UC Health Adult Airway Program.

“Sid was a rare individual for our times. In an age of self-aggrandizing social media celebrity, he eschewed power, ego and material wealth. Instead, focusing his intellectual curiosities in research, clinical care and pedagogic activities, he thrived,” says Myles Pensak, MD, emeritus professor and former chair of the department from 2005 until 2021. Moreover, his passions for the arts; in particular opera, literature and experimenting with a variety of cuisines, enabled him to break bread with a disparate and diverse group of friends. This humble, thoughtful, respectful and gracious friend and colleague was a gift to UC-ENT, as well as the College of Medicine community. He will be missed by all who were fortunate to be touched by his time with us.”

Khosla’s passion for helping vocal performers did not end in the clinic or his research lab. He also served for a decade as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cincinnati Opera.

Eight years ago, Khosla recruited Rebecca Howell, MD, to the department as the second fellowship-trained laryngologist in Cincinnati. Howell, now an associate professor, became a close friend, clinical partner and research collaborator with Khosla.

“He was a genius. He may be the most intelligent person I will ever know, and I am proud he chose me as a partner and colleague. The outpouring of messages from those he taught, befriended and mentored has been a sentiment to his character,” she says. “When I began, it was just him and three speech pathologists and under his leadership we grew to four laryngologists, including two surgeon-scientists, three translational labs and more than 10 speech pathologists. He grew our program into one of the largest laryngology programs in the country.”

During the stressful COVID pandemic, Khosla introduced Howell to mindfulness training, which she says has become a daily practice that translates in both her professional and personal life. Khosla was an affiliated faculty member of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at the University of Cincinnati for more than a decade. He taught mindfulness programs to faculty and students, both at the College of Medicine and the UC College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), says Sian Cotton, PhD, Turner Farm Foundation Chair and director of the Osher Center.

“He was so committed to the mental and emotional wellbeing of both the College of Medicine and CCM students and faculty and he helped us expand at the College of Medicine and eventually bring the mind-body program to CCM. He personally funded several CCM faculty to get trained in the program,” Cotton says. “He would teach mindfulness, meditation, guided imagery and other mind-body techniques aimed at self-reflection, self-awareness and stress reduction. In addition to him being a brilliant surgeon-scientist, he was also a real wellness champion who led by example.”

Cotton and Howell now are working to create some type of collaboration in Khosla’s memory between the Department of Otolaryngology and the Osher Center.

“He was an incredible faculty leader and human being who led with his own personal vulnerability and modeled for others the importance of social connections and emotional and mental wellbeing. Within his own vulnerability he would allow others to be themselves and to show up authentically at work, as students and as human beings,” Cotton says.