June 25, 2012
For the Record: Cheers
BAYVIEW MEDICAL CENTER
Clifton “Bing” Bingham III, an associate professor of medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center, has received a two-year $500,000 grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. A rheumatologist, Bingham is developing an interactive questionnaire that will help incorporate the unique, personal perspectives of individual rheumatoid arthritis patients into their clinical care. PCORI grants are part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and aim to help people make informed health care decisions and improve health care delivery and outcomes. Bingham is believed to be the first Johns Hopkins physician to receive one.
BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Marie Diener-West, a professor of biostatistics, was recently inducted as a fellow of the Society for Clinical Trials in recognition of her “leadership in the design and conduct of clinical trials, for broad educational activities on major topics relating to clinical trials and for substantial service to the society.”
Mary Fox, an assistant professor in Health Policy and Management, has been selected to serve on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board Ad-hoc Panel. Established by Congress in 1978, the Science Advisory Board is charged with reviewing the quality and relevance of the scientific and technical information being used or proposed as the basis for EPA regulations. Fox and others on the panel will focus on developing advice based on current information about perchlorate, a naturally occurring and processed chemical found in drinking water.
Rafael Irizarry, a professor in the Department of Biostatistics, has been named the 2012 Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lecturer by the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he will present a lecture on Sept. 13. The lectureship is awarded each year to a promising statistician who has made contributions to either collaborative or methodologic research in the applications of statistical methods to biology or medicine and/or has shown excellence in the teaching of biostatistics.
Jill Marsteller, an associate professor, and Lainie Rutkow, an assistant professor, both in the Department of Health Policy and Management, are recipients of the Advising, Mentoring and Teaching Recognition Award given to outstanding faculty by students. This is the second AMTRA for each.
Roland J. Thorpe Jr., an associate scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management and the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions, has been named a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, the nation’s oldest and most-established interdisciplinary organization devoted to research, education and practice in the field of aging. Receiving fellowship status in the GSA is an acknowledgment of outstanding and continuing work in the field of gerontology.
Albert Wu, a professor in Health Policy and Management and director of the Center for Health Services Outcomes Research, has been selected to serve on the National Quality Forum’s Patient-Reported Outcomes Expert Panel. The forum’s mission is to improve the quality of American health care by building consensus on national priorities and goals for performance improvement, and working in partnership to achieve them; endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance; and promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs.
Two faculty members from the Department of Health Policy and Management have been selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of SOURCE Service-Learning Faculty Fellows. Carey Borkoski, an instructor in the Institute for Policy Studies, and Beth Resnick, an associate scientist, will be trained to integrate service-learning pedagogy into their academic course work, and will receive a monetary award to assist with community engagement activities.
PEABODY INSTITUTE
ICA Classics has re-released on DVD a 1977 Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 featuring soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, who chairs the Conservatory’s Voice Department.
Faculty artist Keng-Yuen Tseng, violin, organized and led a visit to Shanghai last month by violinists Michelle Skinner, a master of music candidate, and Colin Sorgi, a graduate performance diploma candidate; violist Jaclyn Dorr, an alumna; cellist Mia Barcia-Colombo, a GPD candidate; and bassist Paul Johnson, a faculty artist. The group gave a sold-out performance on May 5—shown on television the following weekend—at the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival. Tseng and Johnson, outgoing and incoming chairs, respectively, of the Conservatory’s Strings Department, also taught master classes at the Shanghai Conservatory.
SAIS
Francisco E. Gonzalez, the Riordan Roett Senior Associate Professor of Latin American Studies, received the 2012 Max M. Fisher Prize for Excellence in Teaching during the school’s commencement ceremony on May 24 in Washington, D.C. Student Government Association president Christopher Cochran, who had taken a course from Gonzalez, presented the award to his professor on behalf of the entire student body. “Your enthusiasm for Latin American Studies is infectious and inspires us to do our best work,” Cochran said. “Though you have a commanding knowledge of your subject, you are humble and respectful of your students, entertaining all theories with thoughtful consideration. We are thankful for you.” Gonzalez joined the SAIS faculty in Washington in 2005, after spending a year as a professorial lecturer at the school’s Bologna Center in Italy. He also received the school’s teaching award in 2006.
Filippo Taddei, an assistant professor of economics (effective in October) at SAIS Bologna, has been awarded the Lamfalussy Fellowship for the year 2012 for his research proposal What Really Matters About Financial Frictions? Asymmetric Information, Limited Pledgeability and Their Interaction. The fellowship is offered by the European Central Bank to promising young researchers who are committed to carrying out research in an area of interest to the bank.
Stefano Zamagni, a senior adjunct professor of International Economics and vice director at SAIS Bologna, in May received an honorary doctor of philosophical sciences degree from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, for his thorough knowledge of economic theories, his work on the modification of the paradigms of economic theory and his pioneering of a new and more humane economics.
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Ravi Anchoori, Elisabetta Kuhn, Leonel Maldonado and Ana Isabel Tergas have received a total of $70,000 in Outside the Box Grants funding from the HERA Women’s Cancer Foundation to pursue ideas and research new directions in the treatment, early detection and prevention of ovarian cancer. Anchoori, a research associate in Oncology, will study ovarian cancer inhibitors. Kuhn, a postdoctoral fellow in Pathology, will research ovarian cancer precursors and progression. Maldonado, a postdoctoral fellow in Gynecology and Obstetrics, will research treatment responsiveness. And Tergas, a postdoctoral clinical fellow in Gynecologic Oncology, will explore barriers to health care faced by a diverse group of ovarian cancer patients at Johns Hopkins.
Gabriel Ghiaur, a fellow in hematology, has received a $50,000 grant from the American Society of Hematology for his work on the role of retinoic acid in human hematopoietic stem cell biology. Ghiaur is one of just five fellows nationwide to receive the 2012 ASH grants, which seek to encourage junior researchers in hematology-related training programs to pursue careers in academic hematology.
Adil Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery, has been named director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Surgery Trials and Outcomes Research. Previously, Haider was co-director of CSTOR with Timothy Pawlik, who is now director of the Division of Surgical Oncology. An internationally acclaimed trauma outcomes scientist, Haider is credited with uncovering significant race- and insurance-based disparities in survival after traumatic injury in the United States. He also is widely known for incorporating sophisticated biostatistical techniques into surgical outcome analyses and for mentoring dozens of trainees in outcomes- and patient-centered research at the Johns Hopkins schools of Medicine and Public Health.
Peter Hill and Richard Rothman, longtime veterans of the Department of Emergency Medicine, have been named to two newly created vice chair positions. Hill, an associate professor and medical director of the Emergency Acute Care Unit that he created in 2001, has been promoted to vice chair for clinical affairs. Clinical director of the department since 2005, he has been involved closely in streamlining and improving such departmental operations as delivery of service, risk management and quality improvement. Rothman, a professor and director of the department’s research efforts since 2009, has been promoted to vice chair for research. He has developed a strong focus on translational research, launching and overseeing studies in epidemiology, diagnostic test development and implementation, and the public health implications of infectious diseases from an emergency care perspective.
Gregg Semenza, a professor of pediatrics, medicine, oncology and radiation oncology, is among three recipients of the Institute of France’s Lefoulon-Delalande Foundation Scientific Grand Prize for 2012. The 600,000 Euro award, one of the largest and most prestigious in scientific medicine, recognizes Semenza’s work in purifying and isolating the protein HIF-1 (hypoxia-inducible factor-1), which switches genes on and off in cells in response to low oxygen levels. Co-recipients of the award were William Kaelin Jr., a Johns Hopkins intern and resident from 1987 to 1988 and now a professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and Peter Ratcliffe, of Oxford University, who discovered how oxygen regulates HIF-1. These landmark discoveries opened the field of oxygen biology to molecular analysis and could lead to treatments for cancer, diabetes and arterial disease.
The annual Stanley L. Blumenthal M.D. Cardiology Research Awards have been bestowed following the division’s yearly cardiovascular research retreat. First place for oral presentations went to Jonathan Kirk, second place to Seth Martin and third place to both Dong Lee and Deetankar DeMazumder, all fellows in Cardiology. First place for poster presentations went to Mariana Lazo, an epidemiologist in the Bloomberg School; second place to Birju Patel, a medical student in Cardiology; and third place to Irfan Khurram, a fellow in Cardiology. First place in basic science research went to Alice Ho, a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering; and a tie in second place to Viola Kooij and Guangshuo Zhu, both in Cardiology.
SCHOOL OF NURSING
Casey Shillam has joined the Department of Acute and Chronic Care as an assistant professor. She comes to Johns Hopkins from the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at the University of California, Davis, where she was a postdoctoral fellow. Shillam, whose research and practice have focused on pain management in the elderly, completed her doctorate at Oregon Health and Science University and was an assistant professor at the University of Portland School of Nursing before undertaking her postdoctoral work.
UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION
Johns Hopkins Magazine, produced by the Office of Communications, was awarded two medals in CASE’s 2012 Circle of Excellence competition: a silver for excellence in design for the Spring 2011 Africa cover and a bronze for general excellence among magazines of 75,000-plus circulation.