2008 APSA Annual Meeting
2008 APSA Annual Meeting attendee
APSA 2010 South East Regional Meeting
 David Standaert, MD, PhD |
Dr. David Standaert joined UAB from the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School as the John and Juanelle Strain Professor of Neurology and Director of the newly established Center for Neurodegeneration and Experimental Therapeutics and the Division of Movement Disorders. Dr. Standaert is an internationally renowned physician scientist whose work focuses on understanding the causes of Parkinson's Disease and other Movement Disorders with the goal of developing new treatments. He is also an outstanding Movement Disorder Neurologist and he will have a subspecialty practice in UAB's Kirklin Clinic. Dr. Standaert brings a very distinguished academic background…Honors graduate of Harvard College, graduate of the Washington University School of Medicine Medical Scientist Training Program with an M.D./Ph.D. in Pharmacology, graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Neurology Residency Program, and graduate of a research and clinical Fellowship in Movement Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty there. As Director of the American Parkinson Disease Association Advanced Center for Parkinson Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), his laboratory was working on understanding both the root causes of Parkinson's disease as well as origin of disabling symptoms appearing after long-term treatment of the disease. He also saw patients in the Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Clinic at MGH. Similarly, Dr. Standaert will be continuing with his research and seeing patients with movement disorders at UAB. Dr. Standaert's laboratory is working on understanding both the root causes of Parkinson disease (PD) as well as the origin of the disabling symptoms that appear after long term treatment of the disease. The lab has a strong translational orientation – our goal is to accelerate the delivery of new therapies for Parkinson disease to the patients who desperately need them. A primary focus of the laboratory is understanding the role of the protein alpha-synuclein in PD pathophysiology, and searching for novel approaches for protecting the brain from the effects of excess alpha-synuclein. We use a variety of cellular and rodent models, and are exploring the effects of several chaperone molecules, including those derived from open-ended screens in simple non-mammalian systems. |
 Roger Cone, PhD |
Dr. Roger Cone earned his Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985. He received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Princeton University. Starting in 1985, Cone was a fellow at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1988, he became an assistant professor in the Division of Molecular Medicine at the New England Medical Center, where he remained until he accepted his appointment to the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in 1990. In 2003, Cone was selected to be the Director of the Center for the Study of Weight Regulation and Associated Disorders at OHSU, and in 2008 he moved to Vanderbilt to be Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Obesity and Metabolism. Dr. Cone's research is directed toward understanding how the brain controls body weight. Cone has received both local and international awards for this work, including the Ernst Oppenheimer Award (U.S. Endocrine Society), the Berthold Memorial Award (German Endocrine Society), the Freedom to Discover Award for Distinguished Achievement in Metabolic Diseases Research from Bristol-Myers Squibb, the Ipsen Prize, the Berson Award from the American Physiological Society, and the Donald Steiner Award from the University of Chicago. In 2010, Dr. Cone was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Cone holds several U.S. patents and has published over 100 scholarly articles. He serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the NIDDK, the Editorial Board of Cell Metabolism, and the board of the Hilda and Preston Davis Foundation. |
 Richard Whitley, MD |
Dr. Richard Whitley is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and Division Director of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the UAB School of Medicine. He also holds the titles of Loeb Eminent Scholar Chair in Pediatrics; Professor of Microbiology, Medicine, & Neurosurgery; Scientist, Cancer Research and Training Center; Senior Scientist, Department of Gene Therapy; and Co-Director, Center for Emerging Infections and Emergency Preparedness. Dr. Whitley’s honors and professional organization involvement include NIAID AIDS Task Force membership; NIAID DSMB Clinical Trials Committee (Chairman); Associate Editor, Journal of Infectious Diseases (2005-Present); President, International Society for Antiviral Research (1988-1990); AAP Award for Excellence in Pediatric Research (1991); Canon Eley Lecturer, Harvard (1991); Elion Award, International Society for Antiviral Research (2004); Chair, BSC, NIAID, NIH (2000-2005); Chair, BSC, CCID, CDC (2005-2010), UAB President’s Medal (2007), NIH National Adv Allergy and Infectious Disease Council (2008-2012), President, Infectious Disease Society of America (2009) and numerous other awards and lectureships. Significantly, Dr. Whitley was appointed in 2009 as one of 14 members of a panel advising President Barack Obama about the H1N1 virus. He and his peers from across the country composed an 86-page report to President Obama on the country's preparations for the pandemic flu. An expert on herpesviruses and how antiviral therapies fight infections in children and adults, Dr. Whitley’s research spans three decades, during which he has published more than 320 scholarly articles. After attaining his medical degree from George Washington University School of Medicine in 1971, Dr. Whitley completed his pediatric internship/residency and fellowship in infectious disease and virology at UAB from 1971 to 1976. |
 Robin Lorenz, MD, PhD |
Dr. Robin Lorenz was named Director of the UAB, Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) in 2006. Under her leadership, the Program has been asked by the NIH and the UAB School of Medicine to increase the incoming class size in coming years. As a further testament to Dr. Lorenz’s excellent leadership, she currently serves on the AAMC Group on Graduate Research Education and Training (GREAT) M.D.-Ph.D. Section Steering Committee, 2008-2011. Dr. Lorenz attended Stanford University from 1980 to 1984, where she received a B.S. in Biological Sciences. From 1984 to 1990 she attended Washington University School of Medicine as a Medical Scientist Training Program Fellow and received her Ph.D. in Immunology and M.D. in 1990. Her graduate work was done in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Allen, Department of Pathology at Washington University School of Medicine, and focused on the recognition of self antigens by the immune system. From 1990 to 1994 she was a resident in Laboratory Medicine (Clinical Pathology) at Barnes Hospital. During that time she did a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, focusing on the development of novel animal models to study the development and differentiation of the gastric epithelium. From 1994-2002 she was an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Medicine at Washington University. In addition to directing the basic science research lab focused on chronic inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, she was co-director of the Joint Clinical Immunology Laboratory of Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital, and Associate Director of the Laboratory Medicine Residency Training Program at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Dr. Lorenz joined the UAB faculty in 2002 as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology. The National Institutes of Health and the Sandler Program for Asthma Research fund her laboratory research investigating the mucosal immune system. She has been a member of numerous NIH and American Cancer Society study sections, and currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation Research Training Awards Committee. At UAB, her administrative duties include being the Associate Director of the Pathology Residency Program, Program Director of the SIBS Undergraduate Research Program, and Associate Director of the Mucosal HIV and Immunobiology Center. |
| Jason Paik, PhD |
Dr. Jason Paik is currently in his third year of medical school training in the UAB MSTP. Dr. Paik received his PhD under the mentorship of Weei-Chin Lin, M.D., Ph.D., investigating novel regulatory methods of E2F mediated apoptosis. Dr. Paik completed his undergraduate training at Washington University before moving to Birmingham to enroll in the UAB MSTP. Dr. Paik was awarded multiple awards and honors during his graduate training, including a Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Predoctoral Fellowship, Trainee Research and Medical Student Research Awards from the American Society of Hematology, the Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Research by a Graduate Student from the UAB Department of Medicine, and a Research Award in Cancer at the UAB Medical Student Research Day. Dr. Paik also investigates trends in MSTP student postgraduate choices, recently reporting his findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Paik JC, Howard G, Lorenz RG. Postgraduate choices of graduates from medical scientist training programs, 2004-2008. JAMA. 2009 Sep 23;302(12):1271-3.). |
 Brent Rexer, MD, PhD |
Dr. Brent Rexer is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Vanderbilt University. He completed the MSTP program at Vanderbilt in 2003 and then stayed at Vanderbilt for internal medicine residency and hematology/oncology fellowship training as part of the ABIM Research Pathway. His research interest is in understanding molecular mechanisms of therapeutic resistance to targeted therapies for cancer and identifying potential therapies to overcome that resistance. In particular, he is focused on studying resistance to lapatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of the HER2 receptor, in breast cancer. |
 Lisa Guay-Woodford, MD, PhD |
Dr. Lisa Guay-Woodford received her B.A. in 1979 from the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) and her M.D. in 1983 from Harvard Medical School. She served her internship, pediatric residency, and clinical fellowship in Pediatric Nephrology at The Children's Hospital in Boston, MA and following completion of her training, she was appointed as an Instructor in Pediatrics. Dr. Guay-Woodford joined the University of Alabama at Birmingham in January 1994 as an Assistant Professor. Although trained and certified as a pediatric nephrologist, her primary appointment is in the Department of Genetics where she is currently Professor and Vice Chair. In 2007, Dr. Guay-Woodford was appointed to the Anderson Family Endowed Chair in Medical Education, Research and Patient Care. Her major research effort focuses on identifying the genetic factors involved in the pathogenesis of autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD). This work has two components: (1) positional cloning efforts to identify disease genes and (2) complex trait analyses to identify candidate modifier genes. As part of the International ARPKD Consortium, her group cloned PKHD1, the major gene involved in human ARPKD. In addition, she characterized two distinct mouse models, cpk and bpk, in which the disease phenotype closely resembles human ARPKD and identified the genes, Cys1 and Bicc1, disrupted in each model, respectively. Current efforts are centered on characterizing the functional roles of these genes and their protein products in normal development and disease pathogenesis. Using the cpk mouse model, her lab has identified Kif12, a gene encoding a novel cilia/flagellar kinesin as a candidate genetic modifier of RPKD pathogenesis. |
 Sandra Zinkel, MD, PhD |
Dr. Sandy Zinkel completed a Music and Chemistry major at Indiana University. She went on to complete a Ph.D. and M.D. separately at Yale University and the University of Chicago. Following residency at Barnes Hospital, she embarked on Heme/Onc fellowship and a postdoc with the late Stanley Korsmeyer where she studied the role of programmed cell death in regulating hematopoiesis. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. Her lab continues to study hematopoiesis and leukemogenesis using mouse models. |
 Kenneth Newell, MD, PhD |
Dr. Kenneth Newell completed his undergraduate studies at Kalamazoo College with a B.A. in Biological Sciences and followed onto complete his Medical degree at the University of Michigan. After completion of his Surgical Residency at Loyola University Chicago, Dr. Newell pursued a Ph.D. in the field of immunology and a fellowship in transplant surgery at the University of Chicago. He is currently a tenured associate professor of Surgery at Emory University with over 90 publications to his name and several competitive NIH research grants in the field of transplant rejection and immunology. Dr. Newell is versed in basic, translational and clinical research and will be an excellent addition to our grant-writing workshop. |
 Denise Koo, MD, MPH |
Dr. Denise Koo is Director, Scientific Education and Professional Development Program Office, CDC. This Program Office houses several key CDC training and workforce development programs with a total of nearly 400 trainees each year, including the Epidemic Intelligence Service, an ACGME-accredited Preventive Medicine Residency, Public Health Informatics Fellowship, Prevention Effectiveness Fellowship, electives and fellowships for medical and veterinary students, and The CDC Experience Fellowship in Applied Epidemiology for medical students. Dr. Koo graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Biochemical Sciences. After combining medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, with an M.P.H. in epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, she completed a primary care internal medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Dr. Koo is a graduate of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and Preventive Medicine Residency. Some of her experiences as an EIS Officer and PMR included investigating tuberculosis spread in San Quentin State Prison, documenting trends in multi-drug resistant TB in California, identifying the cause of an outbreak of cholera in Guatemala City, and assessing the health aftermath of a flood in Tajikistan. Her CDC positions have included running the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System and serving as Director of the Division of Public Health Surveillance and Informatics at CDC. She led the CDC surveillance efforts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Dr. Koo holds appointments as Adjunct Professor of Global Health and of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, and Visiting Professor, Department of Community and Family Medicine, Duke University Medical Center. |
 Sten Vermund, MD, PhD |
Dr. Sten Vermund serves as the Amor Christie Chair and Director of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Institute for Global Health, and is a Professor in the Vanderbilt Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Vermund's research interests lie in infectious disease control and prevention with a focus on developing countries and underserved areas of the southeastern U.S. Dr. Vermund's funded grants include projects focused on HIV care and prevention in multiple countries across the globe. Dr. Vermund works closely with the Vanderbilt-Meharry Center for AIDS Research, the V.U. Program in Medicine, Society, and Health, the Center for Epidemiology, and the Institute for Medicine and Public Health. He serves as PI of a Family Health International (Research Triangle Park, NC)-Vanderbilt grant for the HIV Prevention Trials Network Leadership Group sponsored by the NIAID and collaborating NIH institutes. Dr. Vermund also spearheads the Vanderbilt-Meharry Global Framework Program to develop global health training and curricular content throughout the curricula of both institutions. Following graduation from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Vermund completed residency training in Pediatrics at the Presbyterian Hospital, NY NY, and fellowship training in Pediatric Epidemiology at Columbia University. Dr. Vermund obtained his D.Ph. from the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene, UK, M.S. from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, as well as M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. |
 Terence Dermody, MD |
Dr. Terry Dermody is the Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program and the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He received his B.S. degree from Cornell University in 1978 and his M.D. degree from Columbia University in 1982. In 1985, Dr. Dermody completed an internal medicine residency at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York, and in 1988, completed fellowships in infectious diseases and molecular virology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Dermody joined the Department of Pediatrics at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1990 and became Professor in 2001. He is also Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt and Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Meharry Medical College. Dr. Dermody serves as Director of the Molecular Virology course and Virology Section Director of the Medical Microbiology and Immunology course. He lectures on virology and infectious disease topics in several other graduate and medical school courses, and he attends on the pediatric infectious diseases consult service at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. His teaching efforts have been recognized by several awards, including a Vanderbilt University Chair of Teaching Excellence. Dr. Dermody’s research interests include viral pathogenesis and vaccine development. His research focuses on mammalian reovirus, an important experimental model for studies of viral replication and disease. Chief among his research contributions include identification of reovirus attachment and internalization receptors, elucidation of reovirus-induced innate immune response signaling pathways, and development of plasmid-based reverse genetics for reovirus. He has published more than 150 articles, reviews, and chapters, and his work is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Lamb Foundation. Dr. Dermody has been recognized for his research accomplishments by the Vanderbilt Ernest W. Goodpasture Faculty Research Award and an NIH MERIT Award. He is an editor for the Journal of Virology and mBio, and he is a member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award Advisory Committee. Dr. Dermody is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Pediatrics Society, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, and the Society for Pediatric Research. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of the American Society for Virology. |
| Mary Horton, MPH, MA |
As a Co-Director of the MD/PhD Program, Mary Kollmer Horton works with the directorship of the Emory University MD/PhD Program to lead the academic and administrative missions of this program. As Co-Director Mary is directly in charge of the advisement of all first and second year MD/PhD students and oversees the administrative unit of the program. Mary has been involved with the Emory Medical Scientist Training Program as Administrative Director and Co-Director for the past 13 years, and has worked with the leadership of that program to grow and develop it to over 100% of its 1997 size when she began. With this academic growth came the need for additional administrative support, and Mary led the growth of the MD/PhD Program administration from a staff of one (Mary) in a clinical department to a staff of three full-time administrative staff members and several part-time student assistants in a formal MD/PhD Department in the School of Medicine. Mary has served on a number of academic committees including the AAMC GREAT Group MD/PhD Section Communications Committee for which she worked to develop educational materials which currently sit on the MD/PhD Section of the AAMC GREAT Group website. She frequently gives presentations on MD/PhD training and has been invited locally and nationally to sit on panels related to science and health careers, MD/PhD training and academic administration. In addition to her service to the MD/PhD Program at Emory and her national involvement with the MD/PhD Section of the GREAT Group, Mary is currently a second year graduate student in the Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory’s Laney Graduate School. She is working on her doctorate in the history of medicine with a focus on the History of Medical Education in America and the importance of the humanities in medical education. Originally Mary is a native of New York State. In 1982 she received a degree in Biology from Russell Sage College in Troy, NY, and went on to do graduate training in Cell Biology at the State University of NY at Albany. In 1984 she moved to New York City to join a research lab on the Columbia University Health Sciences Campus, and in 1989 earned a Masters in Public Health and a second Masters in Epidemiology from Columbia University’s School of Public Health. Following these educational milestones, Mary worked from 1989-91 at the New York City Department of Health on a special task force under the Commissioner of Health directed at improving the efficiency and management of the various educational and clinical units of the Department. In 1991, she and her husband moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where Mary took a position in the Grants Office as her husband started his postdoctoral training in structural biology. Over the next 6 years, Mary’s position in the Grants Office grew to include extensive work in scientific grant writing, educational grants management and budget administration with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Courses and Meetings Program. While at Cold Spring Harbor Lab she worked with faculty at the State University of NY at Stony Brook to forward a model NSF sponsored program to encourage and mentor Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). In 1997, Mary and her family moved to Emory University. During her time at Emory, Mary has assisted in the development of several academic programs and initiatives including an inter-institutional relationship with the Georgia Institute of Technology Center for Bioengineering, development of a joint graduate program in Biomedical Engineering with the Georgia Institute of Technology, development of an interdisciplinary scholars program in the neurosciences and the growth of alternative dual degree options for MD/PhD students in such non-traditional areas as public health, the social sciences and the liberal arts. She and her husband are both active members of the Emory community, and are equally engaged in the activities of their four very interesting and different children. |