Thomas Best, MD, PhD
Thomas Best, MD, PhD, FACSM, director of Ohio State’s Division of Sports Medicine, has been elected president of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).
ACSM is the largest sports medicine organization in the world, representing a collaboration of physicians, basic scientists and other healthcare providers.
Best has served ACSM as vice-president and as the associate editor-in-chief of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Clara D. Bloomfield, MD
Clara D. Bloomfield, MD, Distinguished University Professor, cancer scholar and senior adviser to The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, has been awarded the David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award and Lecture by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the world’s largest society of oncology professionals.
Bloomfield’s 37 years of clinical research in adult leukemia and lymphoma, described in more than 850 publications, have changed the way researchers and oncologists think about leukemia and lymphoma. Her work has resulted in the understanding that both diseases are part of a heterogeneous group of genetic diseases and that the biologic characteristics of the cancer cell should be used to classify the type of leukemia/lymphoma and to select treatment for the individual patient.
She holds the William Greenville Pace III Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Ohio State and was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000.
Rebekah Cawley (l.)
Jolene Mariotti (r.)
Ohio State University College of Medicine students Rebekah Cawley and Jolene Mariotti were two of only 66 students nationwide to receive the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Training Fellowship for Medical Students this year. It is rare for two students to be selected from the same university and the first time two Ohio State students have been selected for the prestigious, nationally competitive program.
Cawley’s study will focus on spinal cord injury recovery and will be conducted under the mentorship of Lyn Jakeman, PhD, in Ohio State’s Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, and Michele Basso, EdD, who directs the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation’s Neuro-Recovery Network, both at Ohio State.
Mariotti’s structural biology and biochemistry study aims to advance the understanding of Notch signaling regulation and its role in hematologic cancers. It will be conducted under the guidance of Michael Engel, MD, PhD, atthe Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.
Arnab Chakravarti, MD
Arnab Chakravarti, MD, has joined Ohio State as professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Medicine, a member of the Experimental Therapeutics program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and holder of the Max Morehouse Chair in Cancer Research.
He chairs the Scientific Program Committee of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology and serves on the editorial boards of five publications, including Neuro-oncology and the Journal of Neuro-oncology. He is a reviewer for eight other journals, including Cancer Research and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Chakravarti has published more than 60 articles and book chapters and has delivered numerous distinguished lectureships in the United States and Europe on the molecular mechanisms of radiation resistance in gliomas and prostate cancer.
Carlo Croce, MD
Carlo Croce, MD, a member of the Molecular Biology and Cancer Genetics program at Ohio State’s Comprehen-sive Cancer Center, has received the ARC Leopold Giffuel Prize from the Board of Directors of the French Association for Cancer Research.
Croce, who is professor and chair of Ohio State’s Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics and holder of the John W. Wolfe Chair in Human Cancer Genetics, received the award based on his discovery that oncogenes activated by chromosome translocations begin the process of malignant transformation.
He later identified several other genes responsible for the pathogenesis of lymphoma, leukemia and other cancers. Most recently, Croce has been studying the role of small molecules known as microRNAs.
Croce has been named Outstanding Investigator by the National Cancer Institute twice and is the principal investigator on seven federal research grants. He has published more than 650 peer-reviewed research papers.
Ronald Harter, MD
Ronald Harter, MD, has been named chair of Ohio State’s Department of Anesthesiology. Harter was also named to the Jay J. Jacoby, MD, PhD, Endowed Chair in Anesthesiology.
Harter received his medical degree in 1989 from The Ohio State University College of Medicine, where he was president of the senior class. He served his transitional internship year at Mount Carmel Medical Center in Columbus, and completed his residency in anesthesiology at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he served as chief resident. Harter taught cardiothoracic anesthesia at Georgetown for a year before joining Ohio State’s Department of Anesthesiology faculty in 1994.
He serves as the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) delegate to the American Medical Association House of Delegates and is an alternate director for the ASA Board of Directors. Harter sits on four ASA committees and chairs its Committee on Medical Students and Residents.
Jennifer McCallister, MD
Jennifer McCallister, MD, assistant professor of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, received the national Darlene Buczak Award for her work in developing a month-long curriculum for first-year pulmonary fellows.
McCallister received her medical training from the West Virginia University School of Medicine. She completed her residency at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, where she served as chief resident, and completed a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine. She is board-certified in internal medicine and pulmonary disease, and board-eligible in critical care medicine. Her clinical interests include critical care and asthma.
Sidney Miller, MD
Sidney Miller, MD, director of The Ohio State University Burn Center, was elected president-elect of the American Burn Association. He will assume the presidency later this year.
Miller’s current responsibilities as vice president of the 3,500-member association include promoting and supporting burn-related research, patient care, education, rehabilitation and prevention, with an overall focus on improving the quality of care provided to burn patients.
Miller serves on the board of trustees of the American Burn Association and is chair of its National Burn Repository Committee, which manages the association’s database of more than 190,000 burn patients. He serves on the International Relations Committee of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and is an ex-officio member of the American College of Surgeons Disaster Management Committee.
In addition, Miller has been named to the American Institute of Biological Sciences external review panel for the United States Army Combat Casualty Care Program, as well as for its Combat Critical Care Engineering, Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Medical Monitoring, Automated Critical Care Life Support, and Medical Knowledge Engineering research programs.
R. Michael Townsend, PhD
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute has hired R. Michael Townsend, PhD, as chief information officer with responsibility for all cancer information management, including strategic planning and execution of informatics projects that support operational and strategic goals.
He earned dual bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and chemistry from Syracuse University and holds a doctorate in theoretical chemistry from the University of Chicago.
Prior to joining Ohio State, Townsend was the CIO and an IT management and planning consultant for RIK Data Solutions in Manalapan, N.J. He has also served as director of information technology for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and director of the Physical Sciences Numerical Calculations Laboratory at the University of Chicago.
This section was compiled by Justin Hoffman.