Dear colleague: 

Celebrating Our Colleagues
A reminder that CU Celebrates!, the School of Medicine’s new recognition program for faculty and staff, debuts today, Monday, April 1. CU Celebrates! uses a customizable social feed that is designed to engage employees and leaders in peer-to-peer recognition. It makes it easy for you to offer kudos from your computer, through an app on your phone, or via Microsoft Teams. Beginning in July, eligible staff can receive points toward Amazon items, eGift cards, and more. Faculty and staff can log into CU Celebrates! starting today and find additional resources and information on the School of Medicine Intranet.

Faculty and Trainee Updates
Matthew K. Wynia, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and director of the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities, served on an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that last week issued Future State of Smallpox Medical Countermeasures, an evaluation of the state of research, development, and stockpiling of smallpox medical countermeasures. The study says developing better diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics would improve the nation’s ability to respond to a smallpox outbreak or attack using the virus. The report calls for strengthening the systems and policies that would allow public health and health care systems to act quickly and effectively.

Emily Bucholz, MD, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics, has been named associate editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, effective July 1. The journal is the world’s highest impact cardiovascular journal . Emily’s research focuses on sociodemographic disparities in pediatric heart disease, pediatric quality measurement, and the development of risk stratification models in congenital heart disease. She is funded by foundational grants from the American Heart Association and the Thrasher Research Fund to study maternal-fetal risk factors for congenital heart disease outcomes. She serves as a principal investigator for CU on the Pediatric Heart Network.

Andrea Dwyer, senior professional research assistant at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, was quoted last week in a White House statement about the Cancer Moonshot. First Lady Jill Biden convened executives from leading health insurance companies, community health plans, and health plan professional associations to highlight recent commitments to expanding access to navigation services to help patients and their families navigate health care treatments for cancer and other serious illnesses.

Ankush Gosain, MD, PhD, MBA, professor of surgery and chief of the division of pediatric surgery, is one of the 53 HIP Trial Investigators listed as authors of an original investigation published March 26 in JAMA that evaluates the impact of delaying surgical inguinal hernia repair in preterm infants. HIP stands for Hernia in Premies, and the study, led by the University of Texas Health Science Center, and involved 39 trial sites across the United States. The study concludes that a late repair strategy resulted in fewer infants having at least one serious adverse event, and the findings support delaying inguinal hernia repair until after initial discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit.

James C. Costello, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology, is a corresponding author of an article published March 27 by Cancer Research that describes a study of a platinum-based cancer chemotherapy for bladder cancer patients. The authors identify a potential strategy to improve patient responses to platinum-based therapies and lower treatment-associated toxicities.

Natalie R. Davidson, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in biomedical informatics, is quoted in a March 26 news article in Science about a recent study finding that scientists with East Asian and African names are less likely to be mentioned or quoted in stories that reference their work. Natalie was co-author of a similar paper published last year by eLife that found an underrepresentation of East Asian names in the news stories published by Nature. Natalie’s co-author was Casey S. Greene, PhD, chair of biomedical informatics.

Michael Cookson, MD, MHS, fellow in neonatal-perinatal medicine in the Department of Pediatrics, has received the Basic Research Award for Fellows, sponsored by the Junior SPR Members' Section, from the Society for Pediatric Research.

Paula Dias Maia, MD, fellow in neonatal-perinatal medicine in the Department of Pediatrics, has received the PROSPER Diversity Award from the Society for Pediatric Research.

Michael Zuscik, PhD, professor of orthopedics, and Karin Payne, PhD, associate professor of orthopedics, are featured in an article in CU Boulder Today that announces that a CU Boulder-led team of scientists has received an award of up to $39 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Mike and Karin are co-principal investigators on one of the five teams funded by ARPA-H’s Novel Innovations for Tissue Regeneration in Osteoarthritis program. The program aims to create and commercialize injectable and implantable regenerative therapies for osteoarthritis.

Dean's Distinguished Seminar
Rusty Gage, PhD, professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, will deliver the Dean’s Distinguished Seminar lecture at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 9, in Hensel Phelps West Auditorium. A reception in the first-floor atrium will occur after the lecture. Gage’s work focuses on the plasticity, adaptability, and diversity observed in the brain. He showed that the creation of new neurons occurs in the adult human brain and that environmental enrichment and physical exercise can enhance this growth. His lab demonstrated that neural stem cells exist in the adult hippocampus and can give rise to neurons that are physiologically active. The Dean’s Distinguished Seminar Series brings notable scholars to campus to discuss their work. All are invited. You can find more information about this and other events on the  campus events calendar, where you can also sign up for event notifications.

Have a good week,

John J. Reilly, Jr., MD
Richard D. Krugman Endowed Chair
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and
Dean, School of Medicine