Jonathan Bean, HMS associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, was presented with the 2015 Carolyn Braddom Ritzler Research Award at the Association of Academic Physiatrists annual meeting in San Antonio in March. The award is presented to an individual who has conducted research that has had profound impact on the science and/or practice of physical medicine and rehabilitation.
Bean is an internationally recognized expert in geriatric rehabilitation care whose work has focused on mobility problems, falls and fall-related injuries among older adults, addressing both risk-factor reduction and prevention strategies. He serves on the editorial board of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Governance Committee of the Association of Academic Physiatrists.
Also receiving 2015 Association of Academic Physiatrists awards were the following:
Marla Beauchamp, HMS research fellow in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Spaulding, received an honorable mention for best paper of the year for “What Physical Attributes Underlie Self-Reported vs. Observed Ability to Walk 400 m in Later Life?: An Analysis from the InCHIANTI Study,” which appeared in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
Saeed Alzahb, HMS research fellow in physical medicine and rehabilitation in the Cardiovascular Research Laboratory at Spaulding Hospital, received the Electrode Store Award for best paper in the fellow category for “Maximal Ventilation Limits Increased Aerobic Capacity with Hybrid Functional Electrical Stimulation Exercise Training in High Spinal Cord Injury.”
Sun Hur, HMS associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Boston Children’s Hospital, has received the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. The Vilcek Foundation awards several $50,000 prizes annually to young foreign-born biomedical scientists who have demonstrated significant early achievement in basic, applied or translational biomedical science and have made outstanding contributions to society in the United States. Hur grew up in South Korea.
Self-discovery is a theme that unites Hur's life and work. Hur had an early passion for physics and pursued a scientific career in chemistry before launching her own research group in biology. Today, Hur seeks to uncover how the immune system distinguishes self from non-self. Her work bears implications for the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
Hur launched her own lab as an assistant professor at HMS in 2008, studying RNA with the clear goal of performing clinically relevant research.
She explored how the innate immune system of animals recognizes invaders in particular disease-causing viruses that generate a double-stranded RNA during replication. Because double-stranded viral RNA is typically longer than that naturally found in cells, Hur surmised that a mechanism that uses length to distinguish between viral and cellular RNA might underlie the immune system's discriminatory power.
The clinical impact of Hur's work may extend beyond inflammatory disorders. She is now exploring ways to use genetic engineering to target gene fusion events that underlie some cancers. By engineering an artificial protein that targets the product of such potentially cancer-causing gene fusions, Hur hopes to trigger immune defense mechanisms that kill rogue cells harboring the fusions.
Recently the Harvard Medical School Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation gathered at the Boston campus of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital to celebrate the faculty promotions of several of its members.
Grant Iverson and Irene Davis were named Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Iverson is interested in patient outcomes from mild traumatic brain injury in athletes, civilians, service members and veterans. Davis, who is also director of the Spaulding National Running Center at Spaulding Hospital Cambridge, is interested in the biomechanics of barefoot running and in the rehabilitation and treatment of running injuries.
The promotions of Iverson and Davis doubled the number of full professors in the HMS department of Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, as they became just the third and fourth full professors in the department.
In addition, Paolo Bonato attained the level of associate professor and Sabrina Paganoni and Qing-Mei Wang attained the level of assistant professor.
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation is just beginning its third decade as a department at HMS. The Spaulding Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation residency program was granted accreditation in 1992, and the first residency class began in 1993. In 1995, the HMS Faculty Council voted to give Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation independent department status.
Chloe Wong, a student at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, has been awarded the National Health Service Corps scholarship for her commitment to primary care. The NHSC scholarship selection process is highly competitive, with 1,700 applications received from more than 430 schools across the country; approximately 10 percent of applicants awarded the scholarship.
Since 1972, the NHSC has connected 45,000 primary health care practitioners to communities with limited access to primary care. Today, 9,200 NHSC members provide care to more than 9.7 million people in the U.S., serving where they are needed most.
The HMS Office of Human Resources and the Dolores J. Brown Award Selection Committee are pleased to announce Donna Reed, faculty assistant at the New England Primate Research Center, as the 2014 recipient of the Dolores J. Brown Staff Award.
This award was established by the Brown family in 2002 to honor the memory of Dolores Brown and to commemorate her contributions to the School. Dolores worked as the assistant to Daniel C. Tosteson, HMS dean from 1985 to 1997 and dean emeritus from 1997 to 2000.
The Dolores J. Brown Staff Award pays tribute to an exceptional staff member at HMS or Harvard School of Dental Medicine who exemplifies the spirit and commitment that Dolores demonstrated in her work at the School.
Specifically, the award recognizes a staff member who has a record of outstanding service to his or her position, colleagues and the School; demonstrates respect for HMS and its mission; and helps to create a welcoming, friendly and inclusive work environment.
Joan Reede, dean for diversity and community partnership and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was named a 2015 Jacobi Medallion recipient for distinguished alumni from the Mount Sinai Alumni Association of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Reede will be honored at a ceremony on March 19, in New York City.
Reede is being recognized for the development and management of a comprehensive program that provides leadership, guidance and support to promote diversity and inclusion at HMS through the increased recruitment, retention and advancement of faculty, trainees, students and staff. She has conceived of and implemented more than 20 programs that target individuals from groups underrepresented in medicine. Reede serves as director of the Minority Faculty Development Program and faculty director of Community Outreach Programs at HMS as well as director of the Faculty Development and Diversity Inclusion Program of Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center. She is founder and president of the Biomedical Science Careers Program.
The Jacobi Medallion, one of the highest honors that Mount Sinai bestows, recognizes a commitment to compassionate care and to the advancement of medicine.
Stephen Elledge, the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has been awarded the 14th annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences for his work with Evelyn Witkin on their research of the DNA damage response. Their studies have revealed that all living cells have a pathway that detects damaged genetic material and sends a signal for the cell to repair this damage.
“Stephen Elledge discovered a parallel system operating in eukaryotes that senses DNA damage and DNA replication blocks and relays this information throughout the cell, profoundly altering cellular physiology to promote DNA repair, genome stability and organismal survival,” said Dr. Gunter Blobel, chairman of the awards jury for the Wiley Prize.
The discovery of the signal transduction pathway has led to a new way of thinking about DNA damage and to a better understanding of how cancer occurs, as well as different ways of potentially treating it.
A Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Elledge is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, the Genetics Society of America Medal, the G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award from the American Association for Cancer Research and the Dickson Prize in Medicine.
Elledge will share the $35,000 Wiley Prize with Evelyn Witkin, Professor Emerita at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences is awarded annually by the Wiley Foundation to recognize breakthrough contributions to the biomedical sciences that are distinguished by their excellence and their impact on research and clinical applications.
