Women Faculty Forum honors six with excellence awards
The Women Faculty Forum honored six winners of the John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Excellence Awards on July 23 in the Fifth Floor Gallery.
The WFF Excellence Awards recognize outstanding contributions made by women faculty at the Medical School. Awards are given to professors at each level and are judged on research, clinical, and educational activities.
Winners of the Excellence in Clinical Science Award are Shira Goldstein, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine; Bindu Akkanti, MD, associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine; and Susanna Spence, MD, professor in the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging. Winners of the Excellence in Research Award are Ji Young Yoo, PhD, assistant professor in the Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery; Kendra Carmon, PhD, associate professor at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine; and Irina Serysheva, PhD, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Goldstein is the associate director of the Medical Student Education Program in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and director of the Morbidity and Mortality Conference Series. Her research interests include women’s health, medical student education, and resident education.
Goldstein received her medical degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012 before completing an internal medicine residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 2014 and a family medicine residency at Heritage Valley Beaver in 2016.
Akkanti holds the Graham Distinguished Professorship in Pulmonary Medicine and is the medical director of the Heart Failure ICU at the Heart & Vascular Institute and holds clinical interests in advanced and interstitial lung diseases, asthma, pulmonary vascular diseases, preoperative lung transplant evaluation, and postoperative care, and pulmonary rehabilitation.
Akkanti received her medical degree from UT Southwestern Medical School and completed her internal medicine internship at Baylor College of Medicine and residency at Boston University Medical Center. She completed a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and joined the faculty at McGovern Medical School in 2013.
Spence is the clinical director of quality, safety, and patient performance in the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging. Her clinical focus is on both orthopedic and emergency imaging, and she holds additional interests in quality improvement, appropriate use of resources and throughput, and medical education.
Spence received her medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio in 2005 before completing an internship at Methodist Hospital in 2006. She joined McGovern Medical School to complete her residency in diagnostic radiology in 2010 and a fellowship in Sports, Orthopedic, and Emergency Imaging in 2011.
Yoo’s research focuses on developing therapeutic oncolytic herpes simplex viruses (oHSV) and understanding tumor microenvironment in changes in response to oHSV therapy. Currently, her lab is focusing on evaluating how oHSV/HSV-encoded miRNAS regulate immune cell infiltration and activation and its impact on anti-viral and anti-tumor immune responses in the oHSV-treated tumor microenvironment. Her long-term research goal is to make a visible impact on the prognosis of cancer patients by advancing the translation of her findings to improve cancer therapy.
Yoo received her PhD in medical science at the Yonsei University Medical Center in South Korea. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Balveen Kaur at The Ohio State University for postdoctoral training to study host stromal responses elicited upon oncolytic HSV-1 (oHSV) treatment of malignant glioma.
Carmon’s research focuses on identifying new targets for therapeutic development and investigating their function and signaling mechanisms in cancer. Her lab is currently focused on studying Leucine-rich repeat-containing G protein-coupled Receptor 5 (LGR5), which is highly expressed in colorectal cancer and cancer stem cells. They are developing innovative therapeutics called antibody-drug conjugates that target and destroy tumors and CSCs, similar to guided missiles.
Carmon earned her PhD in pharmacology and molecular biology from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2008 and completed her postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology in 2010.
Serysheva is the Jesse H. Jones Chair in Molecular Biology and is the director of the Structural Biology Imaging Center. Her research interests include structure-function of ion channels, cellular Ca2+ signaling, membrane transport, electron cryo-microscopy, image processing and 3D reconstruction, structure determination of macromolecular complexes, and structural proteomics.
Serysheva received her PhD in biochemistry from the A.N. Bach Institute of Biochemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, in 1984. She joined the faculty at McGovern Medical School in 2008.