Awards and Accolades: University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences Announce Faculty, Staff Achievements

The faculty, staff and students of the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences are often recognized by academic and scientific societies and other prestigious organizations for their significant achievements and exceptional leadership. Among those whose work has recentlybeen acknowledged with awards and accolades are the following:

Isaum Sando, M.D., D.Med.Sc., professor emeritus in the department of otolaryngology at the School of Medicine, was awarded The Order of the Sacred Treasures medal, including Gold Ray with Neck Ribbon for his long and meritorious services both to Japanese and foreigners. Dr. Sando received the decoration on May 11 at the Japanese Government Office, which was followed by a visit to the Imperial Palace where he was greeted by the Emperor and Empress.
Kenton Zehr, M.D., professor of surgery and chief, division of cardiac surgery at the School of Medicine, was awarded the 2007 Cardiothoracic Surgical Faculty of the Year Award. Rodney Landreneau, M.D., professor of surgery at the School of Medicine, was awarded the 2007 General Thoracic Surgical Faculty of the Year Award. Both awards are given annually by the Heart, Lung and Esophageal Surgery Institute. The awards recognize Drs. Zehr’s and Landreneau’s outstanding role in training and educating the residents during the 2006-2007academic year.
Kathy S. Magdic, M.S.N., R.N., A.P.R.N., coordinator of the acute care nurse practitioner program and instructor in the department of acute and tertiary care at the School of Nursing, was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (FAANP) last month during the AANP national conference in Indianapolis.
Katherine L. Wisner, M.D., M.S., director, Women’s Behavioral HealthCARE, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, and professor of psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine received a Service Award from the Pennsylvania Perinatal Partnership “in recognition of outstanding contributions to pioneering research and service delivery on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of perinatal depression” at the Pennsylvania Leadership Summit on Depression During and After Pregnancy held last month. Dr. Wisner is the principal investigator of the first large-scale National Institute of Mental Health-funded trial of methods to identify and treat postpartum depression.
Felicia Wu, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental and occupational health, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, has been awarded the 2007 Chauncey Starr Award by The Society for Risk Analysis, which each year honors the individual aged 40 or under who has made the most exceptional contributions to the field of risk analysis. Dr. Wu specializes in the use of risk and economic analysis in environmental health and policy. One of Dr. Wu’s main research areas is indoor air quality, particularly factors that affect childhood asthma. She also studies mycotoxins – toxic and carcinogenic chemicals produced by fungi – in food and has developed models to estimate the economic impacts of mycotoxins in several areas, including human health, animal health, benefits of genetically modified Bt corn in lowering mycotoxin levels, and regulations. Her newest area of research concerns estimating the impact to livestock health of mycotoxins in corn-based ethanol co-products,which are fed to animals.
Judith Klein-Seetharaman, Ph.D., assistant professor of structural biology at the School of Medicine, has been named the winner of the 2007 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award by the Biophysical Society. This award, which is presented each year at the annual meeting of the Biophysical Society and consists of a $2,000 prize, honors the memory of Dr. Margaret Dayhoff, former President of the Biophysical Society, professor of biophysics at Georgetown University and director of research at the National Biomedical Research Foundation. It is given to a “woman of very high promise who has not yet reached a position of high recognition within the structures of academic society, or to a woman who has begun to achieve prominence, in spite of obtaining her degree recently.”
Rory Cooper, Ph.D., director of the Human Engineering Research Laboratories and professor at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, was selected to receive the 2007 da Vinci Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Michigan Chapter. The award will be presented in September in Dearborn, Mich. The da Vinci Awards® recognize individuals, organizations and corporations in the engineering, construction and technical fields whose design innovations have exceeded legally mandated requirements, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, to further empower people with disabilities.
Marci Nilsen, B.S.N., R.N., student at the School of Nursing, was awarded a John A. Hartford Foundation Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity scholarship for her project, Communication between non-speaking elderly patients and caregivers, clinical emphasis: acute care and recovery from stroke or neurological injury. The scholarship honor is accompanied by $100,000, which enables awardees to focus on full-time study and honing their skills in research, education and leadership.
Hussein Tawbi, M.D., fellow, division of hematology and oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), has received the Paul Carbone M.D. Fellowship Award from the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Research and Education Foundation. The purpose of the fellowship grant is to develop and promote excellence in clinical trials leading to improvements in cancer care, especially in the areas of cancer prevention and the treatment of cancer in the elderly. Dr. Hussein received an award of $25,000 for his research on DNA repair and chemotherapy resistance in melanoma patients. His project explores the combination of decitabine and temozolomide in the treatment of metastatic melanoma. He will be joining UPCI as an assistant professor in the Melanoma and Skin Cancer Program this month and will focus his efforts on establishing a program focused on sarcoma – aclass of rare cancers that arise from connective tissue.
Phillip Kobbe, M.D., a research fellow with Hans-Christoph Pape, M.D., chief of the orthopaedic trauma division in the department of orthopaedic surgery at the School of Medicine, was awarded second place for the paper he presented at the First Joint Congress of the European Trauma Society and the European Association for Trauma and Emergency Services. His paper investigated how the injection of bone components in injured soft tissue induces systematic inflammation with remote organ dysfunction.
Ashley Quintilli, Jennifer Friedl and Kaitlyn Knoll, all third-year students at the School of Pharmacy, recently attended the University of Utah School on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies in Salt Lake City. They participated in workshops on the 12-Step Program, the pathophysiology of addiction, chemical dependency and diversion among health care professionals, pain management in the recovering addict, treatment and counseling, pharmacy ethics and law, group therapy experience and a case study of a recovering pharmacist. Their attendance was supported by Secundum Artem - Reaching Pharmacists with Help (SARPH) and the School of Pharmacy.
The University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences include the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Graduate School of Public Health. The schools serve as the academic partner to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Together, their combined mission is to train tomorrow’s health care specialists and biomedical scientists, engage in groundbreaking research that will advance understanding of the causes and treatments of disease and participate in the delivery of outstanding patient care. For fiscal year 2005, Pitt and its institutional affiliates ranked seventh nationally among educational institutions in grant support from the National Institutes of Health.