C. Ronald Kahn, HMS Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine, chief academic officer at Joslin Diabetes Center and head of Joslin’s Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism, has been awarded the Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award from the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC).
The Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award is given to an individual who has made important contributions that have had a significant impact on education, practice and research in laboratory medicine or patient care.
Kahn received the award in recognition of his 40-year commitment to the field of diabetes and obesity research, more specifically his significant work in insulin signal transduction and the mechanisms of altered insulin signaling in disease.
The AACC also recognized that work done in Kahn’s lab at Joslin has made significant contributions to the understanding of obesity. It has shown that fat cells, called adipocytes, have different developmental origins and cellular functions that lead to risk of metabolic disease.
In addition to his success in the lab, Kahn has received numerous awards and honors, including the highest scientific awards of the American Diabetes Association, U.S. and British Endocrine Societies, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. He has also been elected to the National Academy of Science and Institute of Medicine. He has authored over 550 original publications and 190 reviews and chapters.
Aaron Kesselheim, HMS assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was recently named a Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics. The Greenwall Foundation will provide 50 percent salary support for three years in order to develop Kesselheim’s research program.
Kesselheim’s work examines innovations in regulatory science and FDA review pathways that are intended to support approval of new prescription drugs and medical devices based on limited data and how patients, physicians, payers, manufacturers and regulators can be ethically implicated by these approval decisions.
This award supports empirical and normative research relating to bioethical issues in clinical care, biomedical research and public policy.
Nancy Cho, HMS instructor in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has received the Karin Grunebaum Cancer Research Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship.
The foundation will support Cho’s research, which hopes to gain insight into the role of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in driving desmoid tumor biology. Some of Cho’s work includes injecting NOD/SCID mice with human desmoid-derived MSCs to generate a xenograft model as well as treating the MSC lines with different pharmacological agents to study the in vitro effects of certain drugs on tumor biology.
The Karin Grunebaum Cancer Research Foundation supports junior HMS faculty members committed to cancer research in the early stages of their career. The winner is given $40,000 for one year to use towards their research.
Ann Mullally, HMS instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has received the 2013 Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
Mullally has been awarded $150,000 over three years for her work that aims to understand which growth factors help the mutated hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) to survive, and to then stop the activity of these growth factors by using drugs. This approach could lead to more successful treatments for myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and leukemia.
The award is given to early career physician-scientists conducting patient-oriented cancer research under the mentorship of the nation’s leading scientists and clinicians.
Laura Grande, HMS instructor in psychiatry at the Boston VA Medical Center, has been awarded the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology Young Clinician Research Award. Grande will receive $50,000 for one year to work on a cognitive screening project.
The award program encourages physicians, early in their research careers, to create transformative innovations in healthcare delivery workflows, enabled by new, interoperable medical technologies, with relevance to primary care settings.
The awardees were chosen from a criteria including potential impact of the clinician’s work on patient care, the collaborative nature of the planned work, the innovativeness of the research, the academic excellence of the candidate and the potential of the candidate to become a “rising star” with a future as a clinical leader.
Christopher Ahnallen, HMS instructor in psychiatry at the Boston VA Medical Center, was awarded the 2012-2013 Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award.
The award was established to recognize faculty members who have made significant achievements in moving HMS and HSDM toward being a diverse and inclusive community.
Chandlee Dickey, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry at the Boston VA Medical Center, has been recognized by the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training for her development of an innovative new program called Creating Opportunities for Organizational Leadership Track (COOL).
The program is focused on psychiatry residents who have an interest in mental health administration and organizational leadership. It provides a graded, step-wise introduction to building leadership and administrative skills. Using COOL, residents will lead process teams to effect organizational change.
Lori Lerner, HMS lecturer on surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has been appointed as chief of urology at VA Boston Healthcare System.
Lerner is being recognized for her outstanding work as a clinical urologist and educator. She is known for being an expert in the field of holmium laser prostatectomy and has published and lectured extensively on the topic.
Elliott Antman, HMS professor of medicine and associate dean for clinical and translational research, has been named the president-elect of the American Heart Association (AHA).
Antman was chairperson of AHA’s Committee on Scientific Sessions in 2011 and 2012. He has also previously received the AHA’s Award of Meritorious Achievement. His one-year term as president will begin in July 2014.
Finale Doshi-Velez, HMS research associate in biomedical informatics, has been named one of “AI’s 10 to Watch” by IEEE Intelligent Systems’ 2013 list, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Doshi-Velez was recognized for her impressive research contributions to artificial intelligence. She uses probabilistic modeling techniques to create better diagnostic tools for clinical medicine. Some of her most recent work includes a project that analyzes how autism spectrum disorders evolve over time, while another mines electronic health records to assess the efficacy of treatments for diabetes.
The winners of “AI’s 10 to Watch” are chosen every two years from a large group of international talent. Senior researchers in the field of artificial intelligence nominate the candidates. The advisory and editorial boards of IEE Intelligent Systems make final decisions on the winners.
