Awards & Recognition: April 2016

Ary GoldbergerAry Goldberger, HMS professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Roger Mark, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess, and George Moody of Beth Israel Deaconess were selected to receive the 2016 Laufman-Greatbatch Award from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI).

The trio was recognized for their work over the past 20 years to collect and provide access to big data through PhysioNet, the Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals. A free collection of recorded physiologic signals and related open-source software, PhysioNet provides data that are otherwise inaccessible. It is used by more than 40,000 researchers, clinicians, educators, students, and medical instrument and software developers around the world.

Free access to these unique and wide-ranging data and software collections is intended to stimulate current research and new investigations and has contributed to the release of an average of more than 130 publications per month.

The AAMI’s Laufman-Greatbatch Award honors an individual or group that has made a unique and significant contribution to the advancement of healthcare technology and systems, service, patient care or patient safety.

Goldberger, Mark and Moody will receive their award at the AAMI 2016 Conference and Expo, which will take place June 3–6 in Tampa, Florida.


Colleen Farrell. Image: Kate Farrell Colleen Farrell ’16, has been selected by Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) to participate as a Fellow in a two-week intensive course study on contemporary medical ethics. The program provides the firsthand experience of visiting Auschwitz and other historic sites associated with the Holocaust, where Fellows consider how to apply the lessons of history to ethical issues in their chosen fields.

Farrell has worked as a bioethics research assistant at The Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, is a guest editor of the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, and is a member of the Student Leadership Committee of the Harvard Center for Primary Care. She is interested in going into family medicine and is taking an additional year of medical training to pursue creative nonfiction writing under the mentorship of Boston Globe columnist and primary care physician Suzanne Koven.

Farrell joins a group of 63 FAPSE Fellows who represent a broad range of religious, ethnic and racial backgrounds. They were chosen through a competitive process that drew over 700 applicants from around the world.


Vanessa Kerry. Image: Joanne SmithVanessa Kerry, HMS assistant professor of medicine, has been named among the World Economic Forum’s 2016 class of Young Global Leaders. This year’s list includes 121 scientists, government leaders, future business leaders, social activists and artists, all under 40 years of age, who are influencing and changing policy, society and the world around them.

Kerry is co-founder and CEO of the Boston-based nonprofit Seed Global Health. Seed’s flagship program is the Global Health Service Partnership, a joint initiative with the Peace Corps and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

The program places U.S. doctors and nurses as educators and mentors in training institutions, working alongside local faculty to the next generation of medical and nursing leaders. Seed currently works in three countries in Africa and will expand to two more this year.

The Young Global Leaders have been tasked “to work with one another over the next five years resolving some of the world’s toughest challenges.”


Jeffrey Macklis, the HMS Max and Anne Wien Professor of Life Sciences, is one of four neuroscientists from leading U.S. institutions to receive the Brain Research Foundation’s Scientific Innovations Award. He will receive a $150,000 research grant.

Macklis is being recognized for his research, Specificity and defects of neuronal circuitry in health and disease: Growth cone proteomes and RNA, in Huntington’s disease. This research seeks to uncover the molecules that control the different growth cones responsible for the circuitry that makes us think, move, sense and behave. Understanding the nerve-cell connections controlled by growth cones might uncover what goes wrong in a disease state.

The Brain Research Foundation is a nonprofit organization that funds the nation’s most innovative neuroscience research.


Eric Lander. Image: New York TimesEric Lander, HMS professor of systems biology, is one of 11 Fellows elected to the American Association of Cancer Research Academy (AACR). The Academy serves to recognize and honor distinguished scientists whose major scientific contributions have propelled significant innovation and progress against cancer.

These newly elected Fellows, who join the brain trust of global leaders in cancer research who are already in the AACR Academy, provide expert insight and guidance to the AACR as the organization continues to pursue its mission to prevent and cure all cancers.

The AACR will formally induct the 2016 class of Fellows at its annual meeting in New Orleans, April 16-20.


Four members of the Harvard Medical School community are among this year’s class of national and international leaders elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Founded in 1780, AAAS is one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers, convenes leaders from the academic, business and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world.

“It is an honor to welcome this new class of exceptional women and men as part of our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, chair of the Academy’s board of directors. “Their election affords us an invaluable opportunity to bring their expertise and knowledge to bear on some of the most significant challenges of our day. We look forward to engaging these new members in the work of the Academy.”

The new HMS Fellows include:

Image: Sam OdgenDonald Ingber

The HMS Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Boston Children’s Hospital and director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University

Image: Mass General Photography LabBruce Rosen

The HMS Laurence Lamson Robbins Professor of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of health sciences and technology in the Harvard-MIT HST program

Image: KC Cohen Boston Children'sYang Shi

HMS professor of cell biology and professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s

Image: Mass General Radiology Education Media Service Ralph Weissleder

The HMS Thrall Family Professor of Radiology and professor of radiology at Mass General

The academy’s 236th class will be inducted in October at a ceremony in Cambridge.


Five Harvard Medical School students are recipients of the 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants. They were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic field.

From left: Suan Lian Tuang, Vishwajith Sridharan, Mubeen Shakir, Eran Hodis and Chidiebere Akusobisoros

This was the most competitive year in the fellowship’s history, with 1,443 applicants and only a 2 percent acceptance rate. Each fellow is awarded $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of his choice.

Suan Lian Tuang, born in Tedim, Myanmar, is now pursuing an MD in the Harvard-MIT Health Science Technology medical program and a PhD in chemistry at MIT. Tuang attended MIT for his undergraduate studies, where he conducted research in bioinorganic chemistry and systems biology as an Amgen scholar. Tuang hopes to combine his chemistry expertise and medical knowledge to treat infectious diseases and neglected tropical diseases.

Vishwajith Sridharan was born in southern India and moved to the U.S. at age 9. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his NSF-funded college research on protein thermodynamics earned the recognition of the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation. After graduation, Sridharan held an internship with the United Nations in Switzerland, where he worked to develop guidelines regarding hazardous chemicals management for resource-poor countries. Sridharan is currently working towards an MD in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences Technology program, where he is investigating immunotherapy treatment of cancer.

Mubeen Shakir was born in Oklahoma City and is the youngest son of Indian Muslim immigrants. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma, where he won the University’s highest honor and then went on to be named a Rhodes Scholar. While at Oxford University, he earned master’s degrees in medical anthropology and public policy. Shakir has worked at the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission and co-founded the HMS Racial Justice Coalition, a group committed to improving diversity at the school. Currently a first year medical student, Shakir hopes to improve health systems at the city, state and national level, helping to build a more equitable health system.

Eran Hodis, born in Haifa, is the son of Israeli immigrants. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math and biology from Boston University, where he was a university scholar. After graduation, he returned to Israel to study computational biology as a graduate student at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Hodis has studied cancer genomics at the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which has led to landmark advances in the field. Hodis is currently an MD/PhD student at HMS and MIT. He is working towards a PhD in biophysics at Harvard University. He would like to imagine a world where cancer is a friendlier disease and believes we can get there through scientific research.

Chidiebere Akusobi, born in Nigeria, is now a second year MD/PhD student and campus leader at HMS. For his undergraduate studies, he attended Yale University where he majored in ecology and evolutionary biology and devoted time to science outreach programs. His senior thesis while at Yale on phage-host interactions won the William R. Belknap Prize. Following this, Akusobi was awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue an MPhil in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. Here he worked as a fellow for the Working Group on New TB Drugs. At HMS, Akusobi is involved with the WhiteCoat4BlackLives movement and the Student National Medical Association. As a future physician-scientist, Akusobi hopes to conduct pioneering research that contributes to the better treatment and cure of infectious diseases.


Samia Osman, Class of 2017, is the 2016 recipient of the Anne C. Carter Leadership Award, presented annually by the American Medical Women’s Samia OsmanAssociation (AMWA) to a female medical student who has demonstrated outstanding leadership.

Osman is AMWA’s national student recruitment chair and former national student treasurer. She is being recognized for her work as a health consultant for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and as a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, among other exemplary leadership positions.

Osman has served as co-chair of the American Medical Association, a student representative for the HMS financial aid committee and a governing councilwoman with the Massachusetts Medical Society.

Osman received the award at the AMWA annual meeting in Miami on March 4.


The Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award and the Sharon P. Clayborne Staff Diversity Award were established to recognize HMS faculty and staff who have made significant contributions toward moving the School forward in being a diverse and inclusive community.

Recipients of the 2015-2016 Harold Amos Award include Cheri Blauwet, HMS instructor in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Marshall Forstein, HMS associate professor of psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance and Dennis Norman, HMS associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The 2015-2016 Clayborne Award was presented to Sabune Winkler, director of regulatory affairs operations at Harvard Catalyst, and Ruy Mendonca, animal technician at the Harvard Center for Comparative Medicine.


Aakash Shah. Image: Stefani Jones, White House Office of Public Engagement

​Aakash Shah, Class of 2016, was honored as a Champion of Change for the Affordable Care Act at the White House on March 25. The award recognizes individuals who are creating change and getting people health coverage in their communities.

Shah is the founder and executive director of Be Jersey Strong, a nonprofit that trains and mobilizes student community health workers to address health-related social needs. Be Jersey Strong has recruited more than 500 student volunteers to provide outreach and enrollment assistance to the uninsured throughout New Jersey.

Shah hopes the recognition and endorsement of the White House will inspire current volunteers to do more and encourage other students to come out and do their part.

The Champions of Change program was created as an opportunity for the White House to feature individuals doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities.