Kudos

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Awards and Honors

Pedro Ruiz, M.D., was installed as president of the American Psychiatric Association May 25 during the annual meeting in Toronto, Canada. Ruiz, who is professor and vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical School (MS), delivered the Hamilton Ford Lecture April 28 during the 11th Annual Psychiatric Update/Titus Harris Society 46th Annual Meeting at the UT Medical Branch at Galveston.

James T. Willerson, M.D., president of the UT Health Science Center at Houston, presented the prestigious 2006 Paul Dudley White Lecture June 9 at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the teaching hospitals for Harvard Medical School. A worldrenowned cardiologist, Willerson spoke on “Stem Cells for the Treatment of Heart and Vascular Disease.” In the first Food and Drug Administration-approved trial of its kind in the United States, Willerson is working with a team of researchers at Texas Heart Institute to transplant bone marrow-derived stem cells directly into the hearts of patients with severe heart failure. The Willerson team first performed this procedure with colleagues in Brazil. The lectureship and the Paul Dudley White Society are named for Paul Dudley White, M.D., an American cardiologist who was President Eisenhower’s personal physician. White received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Johnson in 1964.

The Dental Branch (DB) earned the following honors for table clinics during the Star of the South dental meeting.

“The Role of Dental Auxiliary in the Medically Complex Patient Dental Clinic,” presented by Elma Gallardo, dental assistant III, and Marina Munoz, dental assistant II, won first place. Kishore Shetty, D.D.S., director of the Medically Complex Patient Clinic and associate professor of restorative dentistry, was their faculty sponsor.
Grace E. Lee, D.D.S., prosthodontics resident, won second place in the specialist category for “Comparative Retentive Force of Denture Acrylic Resins to Chromium Cobalt Test Frameworks using Different Acrylic Retention Designs and a Metal Primer.”
Third place in the specialist category went to assistant professors of prosthodontics, Maria Gonzalez, D.D.S., and Leticia Perezous, D.D.S., along with associate professor of prosthodontics Donald Belles, D.D.S., for “An Impression Technique for Immediate Complete Dentures.”

Presentations

Thomas Cole, Ph.D., director of The John P. McGovern, M.D., Center for Health, Humanities and the Human Spirit, MS, presented four short films called “Taking Care of Katrina’s Evacuees” May 5 during TexMed 2006, a Texas Medical Association conference, at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Cole also introduced a separate short film on Professor of Medicine Herbert Fred, M.D. UT medical students who created and produced the films participated in a discussion after the screenings.

Jackie Duke, Ph.D., professor of orthodontics, DB and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS), presented at the 27th meeting of the International Society for Gravitational Physiology, held April 23-28 at Osaka University in Japan. The paper was on “Human Bone-Forming Chondrocytes Cultured in the Hydrodynamic Focusing Bioreactor Retain Matrix Proteins: Similarities to Spaceflight Results.” Co-authors were Jacqueline Hecht, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics, MS, and director of the Genetic Counseling Program, GSBS, and Dina Montufar-Solis, senior research associate in the Department of Diagnostic Sciences, DB.

C. S. Raman, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and director of the Structural Biology Research Center, MS and GSBS, was keynote speaker at the Fifth Southwest P450 Meeting, May 8 10 at Camp Allen, Texas. He spoke on“Structural Mechanism for Prostacyclin Biosynthesis.” He spoke on “Structural Bases of Endo- and Hydroperoxide Utilization in Animals and Plants” at the Second International Conference on Nonmammalian Eicosanoids, Bioactive Lipids and Plant Oxylipins in Berlin, May 24-27.

Publications

Amy O. Calvin, Ph.D., assistant professor, acute and continuing care, School of Nursing (SON), and Lillian Eriksen, D.S.N., associate professor, nursing systems and technology, SON, were authors of “Assessing Advance Care Planning Readiness in Individuals with Kidney Failure,” published in the March-April issue of Nephrology Nursing Journal.

Melanie McEwen, Ph.D., associate professor, nursing systems and technology, SON, is co-author of “Called to Nursing: Perceptions of Student Nurses,” in the March-May issue of Journal of Holistic Nursing.

Roger Janz, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy, MS and GSBS, was co-author of a study that appeared in the April issue of Science Magazine. Janz, along with his fellow researchers, took a closer look at the Botulinum Neurotoxin A, or BoNT/A. It is used to treat a wide range of medical conditions and is also considered a potential biological weapon.