Vance Lemmon, Ph.D., the Walter G. Ross Distinguished Chair in Developmental Neuroscience, delivered a lecture at the Cambridge University Centre for Brain Repair Spring School on Regeneration and Plasticity of Neural Circuits. The lecture was titled "Functional Genomics: Phenotypic screening of large gene sets to identify genes that regulate axon growth and branching."

Carla Lupi, M.D., assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, completed the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics/Solvay Educational Scholars and Leaders Program. She is the first Miller School OB/GYN faculty member to be selected from a competitive pool of national applications to participate in this program, now entering its 12th year. The 15-month program is the first-ever comprehensive educational curriculum designed to help OB/GYN professors teach women's health more effectively. The program's purpose is to improve OB/GYN education by offering motivated faculty the skills they need to enhance all aspects of scholarship and leadership; special focus is given to curriculum and instruction, measurement and evaluation, research and statistics, and leadership and management.

May Abdel-Wahab, M.D., associate professor of radiation oncology at Sylvester, has been elected to the board of directors of the Florida Radiological Society, and appointed editor of the society’s newsletter. She will represent Florida radiation oncologists to a national group, the American College of Radiology, where she is also a member of the Prostate Cancer Expert Panel. The panel is involved in the process of developing evidence-based guidelines to assist physicians in making appropriate treatment decisions for prostate cancer.

Andrew V. Schally, Ph.D., M.D.h.c., D.Sc.h.c., the 1977 Nobel Prize winner for physiology or medicine, Distinguished Medical Research Scientist of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Miller School, received the Meienhofer Award for Excellence in Peptide Chemistry from the Roche Colorado Corporation. The award is named in honor of Dr. Johannes Meienhofer, one of the leading peptide scientists of the 20th century and a pioneer of the modern chemical biology field.

An abstract presented by lead author Keith Candiotti, M.D., associate professor of clinical anesthesiology, won first place for Best Clinical Research at the International Anesthesia Research Society’s annual meeting in San Diego in March. The research titled “Polymorphisms in the Human IL-1 Receptor Antagonist (IL-1Ra) Gene Intron 2 is Associated with Higher Circulating IL-1Ra Levels for Patients with Nephrectomies” competed against 417 abstracts. The findings are part of an ongoing study designed to evaluate why patients experience such different levels of pain even though they have similar surgical procedures.  Other researchers from the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine included senior author Melvin Gitlin, M.D., professor of clinical anesthesiology, Zongqi Yang, M.D., Ph.D., Jinfeng Yang, M.D., Ph.D., Greys Sanchez, M.D., and Yiliam Rodriguez, M.D.

Howard Liddle, Ed.D., ABPP, professor of epidemiology and public health and director of the Center for Treatment Research on Adolescent Drug Abuse, recently published research on his Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT), a family-based treatment system.  A study published in the February issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that MDFT outperformed peer group therapy in reducing substance use and specific substance abuse-related problems in young teens.  An article published in the April issue of the journal Family Process described the use of MDFT to reduce the risk of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases among drug-involved juvenile offenders.