Florida State University College of Medicine - Electronic Medical Review (EMR) -

M.D. STUDENTS, GRAD STUDENTS, Ph.D. STUDENTS, POSTDOCS

DEMEHRI ESSAY HONORED
“I never thought the first patient I would lose would be my friend.” That’s one of the memorable lines from a Natasha Demehri essay that placed third in the 2011 Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Essay Contest. Demehri (Class of 2012, Orlando campus) submitted a paper titled “The Heart in My White Coat,” which she also used for a class. Contest participants were asked to describe how a role model had influenced the way they practice or hope to practice medicine. The two other prize-winning essays were written by medical students at the University of Nevada and Stanford. Other finalists represented schools including Harvard, Mayo and Columbia. The essays are tentatively scheduled to begin appearing in the October issue of Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

See the names of the Class of 2012 Gold Humanism inductees below. And watch for Natasha’s essay in the upcoming edition of FSU MED magazine.

ALSO IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE ...
Brett Thomas (Class of 2014) and three co-authors from the College of Medicine had a paper published in the July issue of Academic Medicine. The article, “Contributors of Black Men’s Success in Admission to and Graduation From Medical School,” was based on the research Thomas did for his master’s project as a Bridge student. He presented the results of the study at the 16th Annual Rural Multiracial and Multicultural Health Conference in December. His co-authors were Eron Manusov, M.D., until recently a faculty member at the College of Medicine; Aihua Wang, a program evaluator in the Student Advising and Outreach Office; and Helen Livingston, Ed.D., assistant dean for graduate, undergraduate and pre-college programs.

Thomas (Class of 2014) also was one of only 13 medical students in the country this year to receive a Minority Scholars Award from the American Medical Association Foundation. The $10,000 scholarship will help him complete medical training and eventually contribute to improving minority health. The award is part of the AMA Foundation’s effort to help ease medical students’ debt load, which now totals about $158,000 per graduate.

GOLD HUMANISM HONOREES
Family Medicine Chair Dan Van Durme, M.D., recently announced the names of the 12 students from the Class of 2012 who had been chosen for induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Here are their names, in alphabetical order:
*Kate Alonso
*Natasha Demehri
*Laura Diamond
*Aaron Hilton
*Brett Howard
*Demetrios Konstas
*Brandon Mauldin (pictured here)
*Diana Mauldin (pictured here)
*Ricardo Sequeira
*Michael Silverstein
*Elise Switzer
*Helen Travis

“The Gold Humanism Honor Society Selection Committee carefully reviewed the nominations from MANY of you,” Van Durme wrote in an email to the College of Medicine. “It was encouraging to see so many of our students recognized by faculty and staff from across all four years of the curriculum AND their classmates. These students rose to the top as true exemplars of humanism by receiving multiple nominations from faculty, staff and peers in categories demonstrating clinical excellence, service to others, patient-centered approach to care and compassion.”

NATIONAL AMWA RECOGNITION

The May issue of AMWA Student NewsFlash included news of College of Medicine members of the American Medical Women’s Association. The newsletter featured a photo of Sarah Mike (pictured here, Class of 2012, Pensacola campus) speaking at the group’s national conference while presenting the advocacy project and mentioned the third-place finish by Jordan Rogers (Class of 2012, Orlando campus) for the Women in Science award. The newsletter also noted that Kathryn Winn (Class of 2013, Sarasota campus) is the new national recruitment chair and that alumna Dani Barnes (M.D., ’10) is the new president of AMWA’s resident division.

FMA AWARD
Laura Davis (Class of 2013, Pensacola campus) has received the Florida Medical Association’s Sanford A. Mullen, M.D. Award. The award goes to FMA medical student members who are nominated by their peers for outstanding community service. A spokeswoman said the association’s Medical Student Section chose Davis “because of her dedication to serving the homeless community in Tallahassee and underserved communities internationally.”

FMA SCHOLARSHIPS
Laura Davis also received the Manatee Memorial Hospital-Primary Care Medical Student Scholarship for $5,000. Manatee Memorial donated that scholarship fund to the FMA Foundation.

Kristen Misiak (Class of 2012, Daytona Beach campus) received an FMA Foundation Scholarship for $5,000. The foundation grants a scholarship to one FMA student member from every allopathic medical school in Florida. Recipients are chosen by a selection committee based on their commitment to organized medicine and public health initiatives.

EMRA COORDINATOR
Colby Redfield (Class of 2012, Orlando campus) has been appointed the North East Coordinator of the Medical Student Governing Council of EMRA (the Emergency Medicine Resident Association).

BIGGEST DOCTORAL CLASS YET
The Ph.D. program will be graduating four students with their doctoral degrees at the end of the summer, the biggest class to date. Two doctoral students also graduated in the spring and one last fall for a total of seven doctoral graduates and one master’s graduate this academic year.

Here are the summer 2011 doctoral graduates and their plans: Bradley Groveman, postdoctoral research fellow, Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Hamilton, Mont.; Dun Liang (pictured here), considering offers for postdoctoral positions; Melissa Pflueger, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.; and Sarah Riman, applying for postdoctoral positions to continue her research training.

The spring 2011 doctoral graduates were Xiaoqian Fang, postdoctoral research associate, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; and Fiona Hollis (pictured here), postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. The fall 2010 doctoral graduate was Hyeong-Min Lee, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Pharmacology, University of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C. And the fall 2010 master’s graduate was Nilin Gupta.

HEART ASSOCIATION AWARD
Azariyas Challa, a current graduate student, was awarded an American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship. The award extends through June 30, 2012.

GRAD STUDENTS AWARDED GRANTS
Four Biomedical Sciences graduate students were awarded grants June 1 at the Bryan W. Robinson Endowment Dinner. Since 1983, the endowment has awarded $750,000 toward education and research. This year’s recipients of grants in biomedical sciences/neuroscience are Jieyan (Vera) Chen, Ali Darkazalli, Sara Jackson and Helen Phipps.

Also, Zarko Manojlovic has received a grant for his project titled “Translation Regulation of Type I Collagen in Liver Fibrosis as Target for New Drug Development.” A lab assistant in Branko Stefanovic’s lab, he received the grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIH/NIAAA). The F31 NRSA covers his fellowship expenses, institutional allowance, stipend and tuition for three years.

A SITE FOR POSTDOCS
Several issues ago, we reported on the creation of the Postdoctoral Career Development Program for Florida State, spearheaded by the College of Medicine. Organizers said they would launch a new website – and now they’ve done so. Check it out.


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