Appointments

Eduardo de Marchena, M.D., professor of medicine and surgery, has been appointed associate dean for international medicine. A nationally recognized cardiologist, de Marchena directs the University of Miami International Medicine Institute and is chairman of the University of Miami Medical Group (UMMG). De Marchena is also UMMG’s director of interventional cardiology and the Cardiovascular Center.

Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., director of the Miami Institute for Human Genomics, has been appointed associate dean for human genomics programs. A founding fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics, Pericak-Vance is considered a global leader in the genetics of common diseases. She also holds the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Professor of Human Genomics chair. 

Jeffrey P. Brosco, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics, has been appointed a member of the Florida Task Force on Autism Spectrum Disorders by Governor Charlie Crist. The task force, made up of leaders in autism advocacy and treatment, health care practitioners, and family members of persons with autism, will submit a final report to the governor by March 2009.

Awards

Andreas Tzakis, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UM/JMH Transplant Institute, received the Dade County Medical Association’s 2008 Physicians Recognition Award on March 31. In April, Tzakis was initiated into Iron Arrow, the University’s highest honor and oldest tradition, along with Ana Campo, M.D., assistant dean for student services, Anne Ouellette M.D., voluntary professor of orthopaedics, recent graduate Chris Caulfield, M.D., and medical students Jodie Adam Barkin, Lindley Barbee, O’Rese Knight, and Rajiv Nijhawan. Established in 1926, shortly after the University opened, the honor society is steeped in the rituals of the Seminole Indian tribe and honors those who best exemplify love of alma mater, character, leadership, scholarship, and humility.

The first Miller School of Medicine Clinical Translational K12 award, supported by the Office of the Dean, has been awarded to Hermes J. Florez, M.D., M.P.H, Ph.D., associate professor of clinical medicine and epidemiology. The award provides four years of mentored research support, at $100,000 annually, to Florez whose proposal, “Functional Decline across Treatment Groups in the Diabetes Prevention Program,” was selected from a group of 12 submissions. Ronald Goldberg, M.D., Bruce Troen, M.D., and Silvina Levis, M.D., will mentor Florez. This year the Office of the Dean provided the funds for this support, rather than the National Institutes of Health, to demonstrate its commitment to the development of young academic faculty.

Kassira Noor, M.D., general surgery intern, received first place in surgical research at the 18th Annual Fellow, Resident and Medical Student Surgical Research Forum presented by the South Florida Chapter of the American College of Surgeons in Miami Beach.

A $294,139 grant from The Children’s Trust, to be administered by the Miller School, will help young, first-time offenders with substance abuse disorders get a second chance. Howard Liddle, Ed.D., professor of epidemiology and public health and director of the Center for Treatment Research on Adolescent Drug Abuse, will lead the effort in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Juvenile Services Department. Liddle and his team will incorporate evidence-based multidimensional family therapy into the county’s new Civil Citation Program and compare it to the existing treatment for 120 adolescents in the program.

Psychiatry residents Sergio Badel, M.D., and Janetta Cureton, M.D., along with seven other residents from around the country, received the 2008 Samuel Gershon Teaching Award on February 22. The award is given by the Miller School Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences for demonstrating commitment to the advancement of education in psychiatry and behavioral sciences. It is named in honor of Samuel Gershon, M.D., vice chair of academic affairs in the Department of Psychiatry.

A $7,000 grant awarded by the Dade Community Foundation will help support the Overtown Cookbook Project, a health intervention effort coordinated by David Brown, M.D., assistant professor of family medicine and community health. Healthy Nouveau Floribbean Soul Food is being developed as part of the Historic Overtown Public Health Empowerment Collaborative. The project, which offers a healthy spin on traditional African-American and Caribbean recipes, will be presented at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in October.

Presentations

Robert Gailey, Ph.D., P.T.,presented at the Conference on Amputee Rehabilitation on April 11-12 in Norfolk, Virginia. The conference brought together physicians, prosthetists, physical therapists, nurses, and case managers to discuss current best practices in the rehabilitation of amputees from pre-surgery through advanced rehabilitation, with an emphasis on collaboration to improve outcomes.

Paolo Romanelli, M.D., associate professor of clinical dermatology and pathology, presented “Medical Dermatology, An Update from the University of Miami” at the Arnold Gurevitch Dermatology Grand Rounds hosted at Harbor-UCLA in Torrance, California on February 21.

Ian K. McNiece, Ph.D., presented “Ex Vivi Expansion of Cord Blood Products” at the Howard P. Milstein Symposium in New York City on March 31. At the conference, pioneers in the field of stem cell biology discussed their most recent, unpublished contributions to advances in umbilical cord stem cell expansion (the effort to increase the number of transplantable cells from individual donors) and the implications for the treatment of diseases like leukemia.