Kudos

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Awards and Honors

Lynna Littleton, Ph.D., associate professor of nursing for target populations, SON, was inducted June 19 in Ft. Lauderdale as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (FAANP). The FAANP Program recognizes nurse practitioners who have made outstanding contributions to health care and provides a forum to extend and enhance these efforts.

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM) and holder of the John S. Dunn Sr. Distinguished University Chair in Physiology and Medicine, received an honorary degree, Doctor Honoris Causa, May 30 from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Presidents from all the Czech universities, the U.S. Ambassador and other dignitaries attended the medieval ceremony at the university, which was established in 1348. Murad also is professor of integrative biology and pharmacology at the Medical School (MS) and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS).

Pedro Ruiz, M.D., professor and vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, MS, received the Irma Bland Award for Excellence in Teaching Residents during the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association May 22-26 in Atlanta.

Presentations

Jeffrey K. Actor, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, MS and GSBS, was invited as a visiting international professor to deliver 10 lectures on immunology and the immune system to medical students at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Mexico. Actor, who is medical immunology course director at the UT Medical School, spent May 23-27 teaching in Gualalajara.

Ken Fujise, M.D., was invited by the Thai Research Fund, an agency of the Ministry of Education, Thailand, to speak at the Sixth Royal Golden Jubilee Ph.D. Congress April 28-30 in Pattaya, Thailand. His invited
speech was on “Fortilin, A Novel Antiapoptotic Protein.” Fujise is associate professor of medicine and molecular medicine, IMM; Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, MS; and GSBS.

Kevin D. Pereira, M.D., associate professor of otolaryngologyhead and neck surgery, MS, was an author of “Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Children: Survey of Current Practice,” presented at the 20th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology May 27-30 in Las Vegas. Medical News Today on
the Web reported May 29 that the study found that most pediatric otolaryngologists remove tonsils for apnea without a sleep study.

Publications

In a study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 30, researchers at the UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center showed, for the first time, that exposure to a pharmaceutical estrogen during fetal development can permanently “reprogram” tissue in a way that determines whether tumors will develop in adulthood. The first author was Jennifer Cook, GSBS student who works with the study’s principal investigator, Cheryl Walker, Ph.D., professor at M. D. Anderson and GSBS.

Peter Rady, M.D., Ph.D., research professor of dermatology,MS, and Stephen K. Tyring, M.D., Ph.D., professor of dermatology, MS and GSBS, are among authors of “Clinical, Histopathological and Virological
Findings in Patients with Focal Epithelial Hyperplasia from Colombia,” published in April in the International Journal of Dermatology.

Ronald Rapini, M.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Dermatology, MS; Robert Jordan, M.D., the Jack S. Josey Professor in Dermatology, MS; and Tyring are among authors of “T/Natural Killer-Cell Lymphomas,” published in April in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Robert S. Tan, M.D., clinical associate professor of family medicine, MS, edited the textbook Aging Men’s Health, published in May by Thieme Medical Publishers.