Alexander Bagley, an MD/PhD student, is a recipient of the 2011 American Medical Association Foundation Leadership Award. He is one of only 24 medical students in the country to receive this award, which honors commitment to service, community involvement, altruism, leadership and dedication to patient care. Bagley is co-director of the Sports Legacy Institute Community Educators (SLICE), an organization of medical students that educates student athletes about concussions through free, interactive presentations. Since its founding in 2007, SLICE has served hundreds of young athletes across greater Boston and will be expanding to other medical schools across the country.
Edward Benz Jr., president and CEO of Dana Farber Cancer Institute and HMS professor of medicine, pediatrics and pathology, received the 2011 Margaret L. Kripke Legend Award for Promotion of Women in Cancer Medicine and Cancer Science presented by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. This award was established in 2008 in honor of Margaret L. Kripke, Ph.D. for her unwavering advocacy for and promotion of women in academic medicine and science. Benz is the first male recipient of the award, and is being recognized for serving as a mentor to numerous women physicians and scientists and for advocating for women pursuing medical careers.
David Bor, chief of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and the Charles S. Davidson associate professor of medicine at HMS, was awarded the 2011 Joseph B. Martin Dean’s Leadership Award for the Advancement of Women Faculty at an HMS ceremony May 12. The award recognizes a faculty member who is committed to the recruitment, retention and advancement of women at HMS and HSDM. A clinical and academic leader, Bor helped transform CHA into a nationally respected regional healthcare system, and the support of women’s careers has been a major priority during his tenure. He launched initiatives aimed at promoting professional development, accomplishing work/life balance, and building a diverse and inclusive medical staff at CHA.
Burroughs Wellcome Career Awards for Medical Scientists
The Burroughs Wellcome Career Awards for Medical Scientists serve to encourage physician scientists to pursue a career in research, and give winners a five-year, $700,000 grant to pursue projects in fields related to biomedicine, disease or translational medicine.
Douglas Kwon, instructor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Joshua Schulman, instructor of neurobiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Duane Wesemann, instructor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Bernard Chang, HMS assistant professor of neurology and clinical neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, received the Dreifuss-Penry Epilepsy Award at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, in Honolulu. The award recognizes early-career physicians who have made an independent contribution to epilepsy research. Chang’s research focuses on malformations of cortical development, human brain disorders that are present from birth and are among the most common causes of difficult-to-control epilepsy, accounting for 15 to 20 percent of all cases. In recent years, Chang’s laboratory has been studying subjects with periventricular nodular heterotopia, a unique cortical malformation that causes patients to suffer from both dyslexia and epilepsy.
George Church, director of Lipper Center for Computational Genetics and HMS professor of genetics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. He joins 72 new members and 18 foreign associates elected in 2011.
Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Exploration Grant
The Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Exploration (GCE) program funds scientists and researchers worldwide in the pursuit of novel ideas that can break the mold in solving persistent global health challenges. The GCE received more than 2,500 grant submissions from 100 countries; only 88 projects received funding.
Aviva Aiden, an HMS student, was a member of a Harvard-based team that received a $100,000 grant for their proposal to produce a low-cost microbial fuel cell charger for communities in Sub-Saharan Africa in response to the challenge topic to “Create Low-Cost Cell Phone-Based Applications for Priority Health Conditions.”
Pierre Striehl, HSDM instructor in developmental biology, and collaborator Ionita Ghiran, HMS assistant professor of medicine and investigator in the Division of Allergy and Inflammation at BIDMC, have been awarded a $100,000 Grand Challenges Exploration Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project, “Malaria Screening With a Cell Phone and Magnetic Levitation,” was designed in response to the Gates Foundation challenge topic Creating Low-Cost Cell Phone-Based Applications for Priority Global Health Conditions. The researchers developed an antibody-free diagnostic screening device that separates malaria-infected red blood cells from uninfected red blood cells through magnetic levitation. The device relies on basic components, easing mass production should the technology prove successful.
Daniel Kavanagh, a faculty member at the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT and Harvard, received a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to develop new methods to detect and characterize rare cells that are latently infected with HIV in patients on antiretroviral drug treatment. Current treatments for HIV cannot eliminate the virus from a patient’s body, and as a result, HIV almost always rebounds to pathogenic levels when antiretroviral drugs are discontinued. Understanding what makes latently-infected cells different from healthy cells will help scientists to develop new drugs that can permanently eliminate HIV from the body and affect a true cure for HIV infection.
Xin Wang, HMS assistant professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was one of the Gates Foundation Grant Award winners. The award will support Wang’s work to identify new inexpensive drugs and their various combinations for the treatment of newborns with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy that occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen during birth asphyxia. If successful, the strategy can be used to decrease birth-related brain injury.
Bertha Madras, professor of psychobiology at the Primate Center and the Department of Psychiatry at HMS, is the 2011 recipient of the Marian W. Fischman Award, which recognizes the contributions of an outstanding woman scientist in drug abuse research. She received the award at the June meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), the longest standing group in the U.S. addressing problems of drug dependence and abuse. Madras is being recognized for her research, scholarship, teaching and accomplishments in public policy, while serving as Deputy Director for Demand Reduction in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance Klerman Awards
Roy Perlis, HMS associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Bipolar Clinical Program at Mass General, was awarded the Klerman Young Investigator award for his contributions to several of the major research collaborations on mood disorders over the past decade. Mark Bauer, HMS professor of psychiatry and attending psychiatrist at Boston VA Hospital, was awarded the Klerman Senior Investigator award for his role in developing an empirically supported self-care model for people who have bipolar disorder.
Alvin Poussaint, HMS professor of psychiatry, received the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. The award was given to Poussaint in recognition of his wide array of achievements in the psychiatric field, particularly with regard to ethnic diversity and the effects of media images on children. Poussaint serves as the HMS faculty associate dean for student affairs and the director of the Office of Recruitment and Multicultural affairs.
Peter Rosen, HMS senior lecturer and faculty member of emergency medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Richard Wolfe, HMS associate professor of medicine and chief of emergency medicine at BIDMC, were recently presented with the Distinguished Humanitarian Award from the Bnai Zion Foundation, an organization that provides humanitarian aid to Israel. The award was given to Rosen and Wolfe in recognition of the significant contributions both physicians have made to the field of emergency medicine.
Terry Strom, co-director of the Transplant Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and HMS professor of medicine, was awarded the 2011 Alfred Newton Richards Award from the International Society of Nephrology during the World Congress of Nephrology 2011 in Vancouver, Canada. Strom has elucidated the basic mechanisms of action of immunosuppressive agents and has designed new therapeutics, work leading to the development of anti-CD25 monoclonal antibodies. Using newly developed molecular and imaging tools, the Strom laboratory is now revealing interactions between the adaptive and innate immune systems that are of both scientific and clinical importance. To date, he has published more than 700 manuscripts in the fields of immunobiology and transplantation and has conducted pioneering investigations into the cellular and molecular bases of immune tolerance, the immune system’s ability to recognize and “tolerate” the body’s own cells and molecules in order to prevent organ rejection. The award, which recognizes outstanding basic research in fields relevant to nephrology, is named in honor of Alfred Newton Richards, a renowned physiologist known for the development of the micropuncture procedure.
Nancy Tarbell, dean of academic and clinical affairs and C.C. Wang professor of radiation oncology at HMS, received a 2011 Academy of Women Achievers award from the YMCA on June 15. Tarbell is an internationally recognized expert in pediatric oncology and consistently listed in The Best Doctors of America (Woodward and White). As a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, she has authored more than 300 original publications and book chapters. Tarbell is also an advocate for faculty development initiatives, including mentoring programs for junior faculty and efforts on behalf of women and minorities, and recently led the HMS-wide Task Force on Faculty Development and Diversity
Suzanne Walker, HMS professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, has received the 2011 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society. The award, which recognizes and encourages excellence in organic chemistry, was awarded to Walker for her chemoenzymatic characterization of glycosyl transfer steps in bacterial cell wall biosynthesis as targets for antibiotics. The Walker lab research focuses on antibiotic resistance, with an emphasis on finding ways to inhibit metabolic pathways that are known or potential antibiotic targets. In their efforts, the lab was able to develop synthetic substrates to stand in for natural cell wall precursors, a breakthrough that enabled them to study key steps in the peptidoglycan biosynthetic pathway and to contribute to existing knowledge on peptidoglycan biosynthetic enzymes and the antibiotics that inhibit them.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an HMS affiliate hospital, received an award from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid for achieving “meaningful use” in electronic health records. The award, which totals $2.57 million, is reimbursement for the progress BIDMC has already made in establishing a strong electronic records system. According to Chief Information Officer John Halamka, BIDMC was the first hospital in the U.S. to meet federal requirements for the incentive program. BIDMC has also been recognized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for its efforts to reduce the rate of pneumonia in people on ventilators and to reduce bloodstream infections caused by central intravenous lines.
Children’s Hospital Boston was ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report in more specialties than any other pediatric hospital in the country. According to the magazine’s 2011-12 edition of “Best Children’s Hospitals,” Children’s was the only hospital to place in the top three in all 10 specialties. CHB ranked No. 1 in Heart and Heart Surgery, Neurology and Neurosurgery, Cancer, Orthopedics and Urology and Kidney, and in the top three in Gastroenterology, Diabetes and Endocrinology, Neonatology and Pulmonology.
