July 8, 2009

July People Notes


Patricia Abbitt, M81, a professor of radiology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, received the 2009 Hippocratic Award from the college’s graduating class. The award honors teachers who serve as role models for the class. She also received the award from the Class of 2004.

Frank Ackerman, a senior research fellow with the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), and a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute, was the initiator and author of the new website launched by Economics for Equity and the Environment Network (E3) called Real Climate Economics. The website offers a reader’s guide to the real economics of climate change, an emerging body of scholarship that is consistent with the urgency of the problem as seen from a climate science perspective.

Cheryl Blaze, an assistant professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, presented a course, “Women’s Leadership Forum” at Harvard Business School in its Executive Education Program in leadership in mid-April. She also participated in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps Educator Tour at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio from April 20 to 22, where she examined facilities and the opportunities for veterinarians in the U.S. Army. 

Sarah Booth, a professor of nutrition, was named associate director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, where she is also director of the Vitamin K Laboratory. She is well known for her research on vitamin K, with her laboratory recognized as one of the leading research groups on this subject. 

Kristen Fay, a child development graduate student, has received a Horton-Hallowell Fellowship for graduate study at Wellesley College. The fellowship, which is providing Fay with $11,750 in support during the 2009-10 academic year, will fund her dissertation research on positive youth development.

Kevin P. Gallagher, a senior researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), traveled to Washington, D.C., on April 22 to meet with senior staff of the Senate Banking Committee on the development implications of credit rating reform. Gallagher also gave a talk on reforming investment provisions of U.S. trade agreements at a strategy meeting on the topic held at Georgetown University Law School. Additionally, on behalf of the Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas co-chaired by GDAE, on May 14 Gallagher submitted testimony to a U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee hearing on investor protection in U.S. trade and investment agreements.

Kevin Hinchey, an assistant professor of medicine, is a winner of the 2009 Milton O., M30, and Natalie V. Zucker Clinical Teaching Prize in the innovation category. Zucker Clinical Teaching Award recipients are nominated by their peers and then selected by the Tufts University School of Medicine curriculum committee. Hinchey is the internal medicine residency program director at Baystate Medical Center, a Tufts affiliated hospital in Springfield, Mass.

Andrew Hoffman has been promoted to the rank of professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Since arriving at Tufts in 1994, Hoffman has worked to build an internationally recognized research program in comparative pulmonology. His research has benefited several animal species as well as human beings, and his contributions have ranged from the molecular genetic and cellular to the translational and clinical levels.  Hoffman received the school’s Pfizer Award for Research Excellence in 2001, has served as president of the Veterinary Comparative Respiratory Society and has been a national leader in the effort to develop a subspecialty in pulmonology within the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine.

Gretchen Kaufman, an assistant professor of wildlife medicine and director of the Tufts Center for Conservation Medicine, traveled from February 27 to April 1 to India and Nepal. The trip involved securing international opportunities for fourth-year veterinary students, building collaborations with humane and wildlife rehabilitation organizations in the region and supporting and furthering her research projects on rabies control and elephant tuberculosis in Nepal.

Michael Kowaleski, an associate professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, attended the meeting of the British Veterinary Orthopaedic Association on April 1 in Birmingham, U.K. As an invited speaker, he lectured on “Clinical Application of the Locking Compression Plate (LCP), Clinical Application of SOP, ALPS and FIXIN Locking Plates.” He also attended the meeting of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association from April 2 to 5 in Birmingham, U.K., where he presented a TPLO master class and lectured.

Dan Landmann, E01, E03, M05, a senior resident at Tufts Medical Center, received the 2009 Information Technology Award in the medical resident, fellow and intern category from the Massachusetts Medical Society at the society’s annual meeting on May 7 in Boston. Landmann was recognized for his creation of an easy-to-use website to improve communication among groups while volunteering in Guatemala, so that all participants could communicate with past, present and future volunteers. As a volunteer member of the surgical team of Hospital de la Familia Foundation, he also helped to build an ophthalmology clinic and surgery center and was part of a team that performed more than 100 cataract surgeries.

Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics in the School of Arts and Sciences, presented testimony to two Congressional committees this spring on energy policy issues. In March, he testified before the House Committee on Ways and Means on reducing price volatility in cap-and-trade systems for climate change. In that hearing he presented a proposal for a hybrid carbon tax that eliminates short-run price volatility while achieving long-term targets for greenhouse gas emissions. In April Metcalf testified before the Senate Committee on Finance on achieving technology neutrality towards energy in the tax code. 

Neil Miller, a lecturer in English in the School of Arts and Sciences, won first place for best book and best regional book in the eighth annual Arizona Book Awards for his Kartchner Caverns: How Two Cavers Discovered and Saved One of the Wonders of the Natural World. The book also won a 2008 Southwest Book Award, sponsored by the Border Regional Library Association. See the Tufts Journal story about Miller and his book.

Mario E. Motta, M78, an assistant clinical professor of medicine, has been elected president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, the statewide professional organization of physicians. He will serve a one-year term as the top officer of the society whose membership includes more than 21,000 physicians, residents and medical students throughout the Commonwealth. Board-certified in internal medicine, cardiology and nuclear cardiology, Motta practices at North Shore Cardiovascular Associates, a private group practice in Salem, Mass. Motta has been on the faculty of Tufts Medical School since 1993 and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology.

Mark Pokras, an associate professor in the departments of environmental and population health and wildlife medicine, visited Taiwan and Hong Kong in April. In Taiwan, he gave the invited keynote, “Conservation Medicine at Tufts and Around the World,” to celebrate the initiation of a new program in conservation medicine at the National Pingtung University of Science & Technology’s Institute of Wildlife Conservation. In Hong Kong, he gave a presentation on “Tufts’ Leadership on Conservation Medicine” for Tufts alumni and board members of the Nature Conservancy’s Asia/China Program.

Edward Saltzman, an associate professor of nutrition, was named chair of the Friedman School’s Department of Nutrition Sciences. Saltzman, also an associate professor of medicine at the School of Medicine, is a scientist in the Energy Metabolism Laboratory of the HNRCA, where his research has focused on the role of diet composition in the regulation of energy metabolism.

Sharan L. Schwartzberg, a professor of occupational therapy and adjunct professor of psychiatry, presented a short course, “Psychiatric Group Outcome Study: A Model for Integrating Occupational Therapy Education, Research, and Practice” with Jane Crimmins, an occupational therapy graduate student and research assistant, at the American Occupational Therapy Association annual meeting in Houston on April 26.

Johanna Seddon, a professor of ophthalmology at the School of Medicine and adjunct professor at the Friedman School, was named a distinguished Gold Fellow by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Seddon is among the first group of members recognized for their accomplishments, leadership and contributions to the association. She discovered the relationship between nutritional factors and age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness, and has discovered four new genetic variants associated with this increasing cause of vision loss.

Kenneth Shadlen, a senior research fellow with the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), presented at the international seminar, “200 Years of Intellectual Property in Brazil,” held in Brasilia on April 29 and 30.

Charles Shoemaker, a professor of biomedical sciences at the Cummings School, and Saul Tzipori, a professor of microbiology and infectious diseases and the Agnes Varis University Chair in Science and Society, are co-principal investigators on an NIH grant proposal that was awarded funding through the New England Regional Center of Excellence. The grant is titled “Tagged Binding Agents as Improved Anti-Toxin Therapeutics.” Daniela Bedenice, Abhineet Sheoran and Jean Mukherjee, assistant professors at the Cummings School, are co-investigators on the five-year, $1,571,035 grant.

Patrick Skelly, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, presented a seminar entitled “Functional Characterization of the Schistosome Surface” at the Tufts Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences on April 17.

Timothy A. Wise, a research and policy director at the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE), spoke on May 9 at a Boston University conference on “The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives.” He was part of a panel discussion, “The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics.” More information can be found at http://www.bu.edu/euforyou/EU/future-of-food.html

Michael Worthington, an associate professor of medicine, is a winner of the 2009 Milton O., M30, and Natalie V. Zucker Clinical Teaching Prize in the accomplishment category. The Zucker Clinical Teaching Award recipients are nominated by their peers and then selected by the Tufts University School of Medicine curriculum committee. Worthington is chief of infectious diseases at Caritas St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, a Tufts-affiliated hospital.

Dayong Wu, an assistant professor of nutrition, has been appointed associate director of the Nutritional Immunology Laboratory at the HNRCA.

Jun Xu, an assistant professor of biomedical sciences at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, was invited to speak at the 17th annual Workshop on Steroid Hormones and Brain Function held in Breckenridge, Colo., in early April. The title of his talk was “Behavioral Effects of the X-linked Histone Enzyme Jarid1c.” He also gave a seminar on April 14 in the Department of Physiology at the Tufts School of Medicine.  The title of his talk was “Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior: The Involvement of Chromatin Remodeling.”

Elisa Alter Zenni, J85, M89, an associate professor of pediatrics and assistant dean for educational affairs at the University of Florida College of Medicine’s Jacksonville campus, is a member of the College of Medicine’s Society of Teaching Scholars, established for faculty who have demonstrated teaching excellence and a commitment to mentoring future physicians and scientists. Zenni was the first female faculty member inducted into the society.

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