This photo of Senior Associate Dean Alma Littles, M.D., appeared on the website of the American Medical Association. As members of the AMA’s Section on Medical Schools, Littles and Dean John Fogarty, M.D., helped judge the research competition among students and residents at the association’s annual meeting. The photographer caught her in the line of duty.

Four College of Medicine faculty members were listed among the country’s best physicians. Daniel Van Durme, M.D., chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health, Curtis Stine, M.D., associate chair of Family Medicine and Rural Health, and Ricardo Gonzalez-Rothi, M.D., chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences, were selected by their peers for the Best Doctors in America 2013 database. Ed Bradley, M.D., education director for surgery in Clinical Sciences, was selected as one of America’s Top Surgeons for 2012 by the Consumers’ Research Council of America.

DEPARTMENT OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES
A group project for Biomedical Sciences has received Equipment and Infrastructure Enhancement Grant funding of $40,000. The project, “Improving Time and Resource Efficiency With Capillary Nanofluidic Protein Detection,” was submitted jointly by James Olcese, Jamila Horabin, Michelle Arbeitman, Akash Gunjan, Mohamed Kabbaj, Daniel Kaplan, Choogon Lee, Tim Megraw, Branko Stefanovic, Cathy Levenson, Ewa Bienkiewicz and Pradeep Bhide, along with these faculty members from other FSU departments: Hengli Tang, (Biological Science), Fanxiu Zhu (Biological Science), Yan Li (Chemistry & Biomed Engineering), Jonathan Dennis (Biological Science) and Richard Hyson (Psychology). (Each has a Ph.D.) The EIEG is open to all FSU faculty members.

Bhide received an FSU GAP (Grant Assistance Program) Award to help move his discoveries on treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to the marketplace. Listen to an FSU Headlines radio interview with Bhide.

Bhide directs the College of Medicine Center for Brain Repair, which is co-sponsoring a fundraiser Feb. 14-15 to benefit the Brian Jackson Dystonia Research and Discovery Program. Here is the ticket information.

Professor Michael Blaber, Ph.D., is chair of the committee that’s organizing FSU’s third annual Life Sciences Symposium on Feb. 14-15. Get more information about the speakers and registration.

Read about Blaber’s latest published paper in the Top Stories section.

Susanne Cappendijk, Ph.D., had a paper published in the International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications. The paper, “Automatic data analysis of real-time song and locomotor activity in zebra finches,” was co-authored by Geoffery Miller (Department of Scientific Computing), Patrick Yount (Department of Computer Science) and Robert van Engelen (Department of Computer Science).

Professor Myra Hurt, Ph.D., senior associate dean for research and graduate programs, and Research Associate Raed Rizkallah, Ph.D. (pictured here), received an FSU GAP Award to help develop a way to grow a never-ending supply of an important antibody used in many forms of disease research. Listen to an FSU Headlines radio interview.

The Hurt Lab also had a paper published by PLoS One. The paper, “The Transcription Factor YY1 is a Novel Substrate for Aurora B Kinase at G2/M Transition of the Cell Cycle,” was co-authored by Ari Kassardjian, former graduate student and principal author; Rizkallah; Sarah Riman, postdoctoral associate; Samuel Renfro, undergraduate; Beth Alexander, research coordinator; and Hurt.

The Kato Lab had a paper published in the Dec. 7 edition of Cell. The paper, “Tet3 CXXC Domain and Dioxygenase Activity Cooperatively Regulate Key Genes for Xenopus Eye and Neural Development,” was researched by three independent labs (Harvard Medical School, University of Toronto and Florida State University). It was co-authored for FSU by Yoichi Kato, Ph.D., and Akiko Kato, lab assistant.

The Choogon Lee Lab had the paper “Transcriptional Architecture and Chromatin Landscape of the Core Circadian Clock in Mammals,” in collaboration with the Takahashi lab at UT Southwestern University, published in Science. Also published, in Diabetes, was “Per2 Mutation Recapitulates the Vascular Phenotype of Diabetes in the Retina and Bone,” co-authored by the Lee Lab in collaboration with the Grant Lab at the University of Florida.

Associate Professor Tim Megraw, Ph.D., and Assistant in Medicine Ling-Rong Kao, Ph.D., had a commentary published in Current Biology. The title is “Cytokinesis: RhoGEFs Control a Developmental Cleavage Switch.” 

The Stefanovic Lab had a recent publication. The manuscript, “Role of cytokine receptor-like factor 1 in hepatic stellate cells and fibrosis,” was co-authored by Lela Stefanovic (senior researcher) and Branko Stefanovic and is published in the World Journal of Hepatology.

Assistant Professor Jacob VanLandingham, Ph.D., is developing a drug to treat mild traumatic brain injuries such as concussions. Listen to the FSU Headlines radio story. Read the Tallahassee Democrat story about VanLandingham’s work.

The Yanchang Wang Lab reports these recent publications: “A series of beta-carboline derivatives inhibit the kinase activity of PLKs,” Wang et al., PLoS One; “Identification of anti-tuberculosis agents that target ribosomal protein interactions using yeast two-hybrid system,” Wang et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and “Slk19 clusters kinetochores and facilitates chromosome bipolar attachment,” Daniel Richmond, Raed Rizkallah, Fengshan Liang, Myra Hurt and Wang, Molecular Biology of the Cell (e-published ahead of print; chosen as highlights paper by editorial board).


DEPARTMENT OF CLINICAL SCIENCES
Education Director Ed Bradley III, M.D., took part in a formal Southern Surgical Association discussion of the paper “Total pancreatectomy with islet cell transplantation” in Palm Beach in December. Bradley, who is a clerkship director at the Sarasota Regional Campus, is also on the Program Committee for the upcoming national surgical meeting of the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract.

Deb Danforth, M.S., ARNP, is the new president of the Council of Advanced Practice Nurses and vice president of the new foundation formed for nurse practitioners nationally: the American Nurse Practitioner Foundation (www.ANP-foundation.org). She also has been selected to serve on the Advisory Board of the Florida Healthcare Simulation Alliance (FHSA).

Danforth also presented at the International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare conference in late January.

Allison Leatzow, of the Autism Institute, is one of the curators of the “I Am Me: Artists and Autism” exhibition being presented Feb. 8-March 31 at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts.

Professor Gerry Maitland, M.D., gave the following talks as a guest speaker: “Maintaining Wellness in Multiple Sclerosis,” Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, Dothan, Ala.; “Sleep Disorders in Parkinsonism,” American Parkinson Disease Association, Tallahassee; and “Pharmaceutical Advances in Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis,” Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, Thomasville, Ga. He also was a featured speaker for the National Council on Aging on “Common Mistakes Made in the Evaluation of a Dizzy Patient,” in a national webcast sponsored by the Senior Coalition of Florida.

Maitland co-authored a paper titled “Functional Ambulatory Profile Changes During Cognitive Load in Parkinsonism” with Dr. Leonard LaPointe for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Convention in Atlanta. He also received a certificate of recognition from the National Eye Institute and the Neuro-Ophthalmology Research Disease Investigator Consortium for an outstanding clinical practice and research site in neuro-ophthalmology.

Assistant Professor Kristin Parsley, M.D., was chosen by the American Academy of Pediatrics to serve on the National Editorial Advisory Board for the Genetics in Primary Care Institute. The board has been working for six months on the institute's new integrative website. She also was elected by the Pediatric TAG and the World Health Organization as a Pediatric Peer Reviewer for the ICD 11 Revision.

Parsley also assisted the Baylor College of Medicine with compilation and clinical contribution of patients and genotypic/phenotypic descriptors for a research article published in the European Journal of Human Genetics. The title was “Phenotypic spectrum and genotype-phenotype correlations of NRXN1 exon deletions.” Also, her research was chosen for a platform presentation at the David W. Smith Workshop, focusing on clinical genetics, mostly dysmorphology and congenital malformation. The platform presentation was “Spinal Cord Dysraphisms Associated with Abnormalities in Embryogenesis: A Spectral Discussion of Craniocervical to Lumbosacral Anomalies.”

DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY MEDICINE AND RURAL HEALTH
Associate Professor José Rodríguez, M.D., spoke during a Florida State TEDx event during Open Access Week in October. TED, a nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” organizes talks that range across a variety of disciplines and topics. Through independently organized TED-like events called TEDx, communities and individuals can begin a conversation at the local level, and FSU received approval to host one of these events. The theme was “Digital Directions,” with a concentration on technology use in higher education. Rodríguez’s talk, “Creating Connections,” focused on the College of Medicine’s HEAL publication. He discussed how he has used technology to create and openly distribute HEAL and the impact it’s had on strengthening relationships among patients, students and providers.

DEPARTMENT OF GERIATRICS
Associate Chair Lisa Granville, M.D., and Chair Ken Brummel-Smith, M.D., are featured in an American Geriatrics Society video that focuses on falls as the leading cause of death by injury among older Americans. Watch the video. Please note: The video starts with a short advertisement unrelated to the content featuring Granville and Brummel-Smith.

Granville also has been certified as an instructor in Tai Chi: Moving for Better Balance.

Assistant Professor Chris Mulrooney, MPS, Ph.D., was invited to deliver a lecture on leadership and culture change in long-term care in Florida A&M University’s Program in Health Administration. Mulrooney is also assistant dean for graduate medical education

CENTER FOR INNOVATIVE COLLABORATION IN MEDICINE & LAW 
Director Marshall Kapp, J.D., MPH, was co-author of a new book chapter in the third edition of Comprehensive Dermatologic Drug Therapy (Stephen E. Wolverton, editor), Elsevier Saunders (2012), Chapter 68. Kapp also presented “Elder Law Overview” as an invited online lecturer in the Legal Scholars Seminar Series sponsored by Loyola University-Chicago School of Law.

DIVISION OF HEALTH AFFAIRS
Assistant Professor Henry Carretta, Ph.D., MPH, is leading research into treatment of asthma at Florida hospitals. Listen to the FSU Headlines radio story.

CHARLOTTE EDWARDS MAGUIRE MEDICAL LIBRARY
Systems Librarian Susan Epstein, MLS, presented a lightning round session, “Implementing a Library Team Research Service,” at The Innovation Conference: Fostering Creativity and Invention in Academic Libraries. The conference was sponsored by Florida State University Libraries and the Panhandle Library Access Network (PLAN).

Library Director Barbara Shearer, MSLS, AHIP, is the 2013 chair of the Florida Consortium of Academic Libraries of Medicine (FCALM).  The group comprises the directors of Florida’s eight medical school libraries. The December meeting focused on cooperative licensing of electronic medical resources and strategies for implementing new open-access publishing models across all of the member schools. “It’s about how we can collaborate and communicate best with all of our partners, while meeting the unique needs of our home institutions,” Shearer said.  “While we continue to license resources through traditional publishing avenues, we are also looking to the future and the possibilities that open-access initiatives provide to stem rising costs of electronic resources.”

DAYTONA BEACH REGIONAL CAMPUS
Clerkship faculty member Wesley Driggers, M.D., is president of the Halifax Health medical staff, team physician at Spruce Creek High School and a volunteer at the Jesus Clinic.

FORT PIERCE REGIONAL CAMPUS
Surgery Professor Stanley Kurek, D.O., presented “EAST Leadership Development Workshop Part One: Leadership Skills and Negotiation Strategies” in January at the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma Twenty-Sixth Scientific Assembly in Scottsdale, Ariz. He also co-authored (with Valerie Sams, Christy Lawson, et al.) “Effect of Rotational Therapy on Aspiration Risk of Enteral Feeds,” published in Nutrition in Clinical Practice, and (with Keith Clancy, et al.) “Screening for blunt cardiac injury: An EAST practice management guideline,” published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.

Clerkship faculty member John Lanza, M.D., has been nominated to chair the CPT/RVU committee for the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. This national committee is responsible for overseeing all correct coding and Medicare RVU valuations on behalf of the entire membership of the academy. This nomination follows two years of service as the AAO-HNS alternate advisor to the RUC committee of the American Medical Association.

Clerkship faculty member Michael Wein, M.D., will speak at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. The conference will focus on the treatment of allergic rhinitis with immunotherapy.

Clerkship faculty member Camysha Wright, M.D., passed her fellowship examination in otolaryngic allergy and has become an official board-certified otolaryngic allergist.

ORLANDO REGIONAL CAMPUS
Santhi Konduri, Ph.D., MD Anderson Cancer Research Institute in Orlando, was the major corresponding author of “MGMT Inhibition Restores ER? Functional Sensitivity to Antiestrogen Therapy,” published last year in Molecular Medicine.

Professor and Pediatric Clerkship Director Joan Meek, M.D., presented “Clinical Breastfeeding Counseling Skills” at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans in October. In November she gave two presentations – “The Revised AAP Breastfeeding Guidelines and National Initiatives to Ensure Success” and “Breastfeeding Clinical Cases: You Be the Expert!” – at the 29th Annual Colin J. Condron Care of the Sick Child Conference at the Swan Hotel at Walt Disney World. In December she represented the American Academy of Pediatrics at the Global Breastfeeding Summit in Madrid, Spain. Meek, who is associate dean for graduate medical education, also presented “Infant Feeding and Childhood Obesity” at the World Breastfeeding Conference in New Delhi, India, attended by delegates from more than 80 countries.

PENSACOLA REGIONAL CAMPUS
Clerkship faculty member Stephen Slobodian, M.D., has passed the Spinal Cord Injury Board recertification. 

Clerkship faculty member Saul Ullman, M.D., was a co-author of an article published in Cornea.  The title was “Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty for spontaneous descemet membrane detachment in a patient with osteogenesis imperfecta.”