Research Series 2022-2023

A series of research-specific workshops were scheduled to meet the career development needs of postdoctoral trainees through senior investigators across the health sciences.

September 7, 2022 Know Your K: Writing a Successful Career Development Award Application For Basic Scientists and Clinical Researchers

Time: 3-5pm ET
Location: Zoom
Presenter: Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP
Description: Mentored Career Development Awards (also known as "K Awards") are the National Institute of Health's (NIH) primary grant mechanisms for supporting trainees, from new- to mid-career investigators, and are a key step in any researcher's career. Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP, shared step-by-step instructions on how to prepare an outstanding and successful K application during "Know Your K: Writing a Successful Career Development Award Application for Basic Scientists and Clinical Investigators". An overview of the application process and review criteria was covered, and the range of K awards was discussed.

Presenter Bio: Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP, is Distinguished Professor of Health Policy and Management, and holds secondary appointments in Medicine, Industrial Engineering, Business Administration and Clinical and Translational Science. A practicing general internist, he has conducted research in decision analysis and the mathematical modeling of disease for over 30 years, and has expertise in cost effectiveness analysis, mathematical optimization and simulation, and the measurement and inclusion of patient preferences into decision problems. He has used decision sciences to examine clinical, costs, policy and allocation questions in liver transplantation, vaccination strategies, operative interventions, influenza, COVID-19, HIV and the use of many medications. His recent research has concentrated in the use of mathematical methods from operations research and management science, including Markov Decision Processes, Discrete Event and Agent-based Simulation. As director of the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory, he continues to lead the development of simulation tools for representing complex diseases and the evaluation of policies to improve health and public health. He has been a principal or co-investigator on over 40 NIH grants and has published over 170 papers in peer-reviewed journals. During his career, he has served as a primary or secondary mentor for over 20 K-type or other training grants, as well as having served as a mentor for many fellows and graduate students. In addition, for 10 years he served as the director of degree-granting programs for the Institute for Clinical Research Education, where he developed and directed the Certificate and Master’s degree programs in Clinical Research, and co-directed the PhD program in Clinical and Translational Science. He has over 6 years of service on study sections for the NIH and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and served as the Chair of the Health Care Technology and Decision Sciences Study Section at AHRQ.

September 28, 2022 Finding Funding Opps: PIVOT Database Training to Accelerate Your Research Career *VIEW RECORDING*

Time: 12-1pm ET
Location: Zoom
Presenter: Ryan Champagne, Bradley Pollock
Description: Discover the world of funding opportunities and easily identify the ones that are right for you at any career stage! Are you looking for funding opportunities to kickstart your research career or to move it to the next level and not sure where to start? Pivot is a searchable funding opportunity and expertise database, subscribed to by the University of Pittsburgh and offered to all faculty, postdoctoral trainees, and graduate students. The database is a comprehensive source for funding information from all disciplines and users can conduct searches for funding opportunities, save searches and receive funding alerts tailored to your scholarly profile. Join Ryan Champagne and Bradley Pollock from Pitt’s Office of Sponsored Programs to learn how to use this valuable resource. Additional resources were also shared for identifying prestigious academic awards, fellowships available to non-US citizens, funding programs for early career faculty, and internally-coordinated competitions for limited submission and University-funded programs.

Presenter Bios:

Ryan Champagne is the Assistant Director for Research Development at the University of Pittsburgh. He has a Master's Degree in Library & Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh.
Bradley Pollock is the team's Research Development Analyst. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Literary Studies from Allegheny College.

The Research Development team produces and distributes funding opportunity newsletters, provides informational sessions detailing specific funding mechanisms, coordinates internal grant competitions for limited submissions, and identifies relevant funding opportunities for specific research projects. The team sits in the University’s Office of Sponsored Programs, and partners with other cross-cutting administrative units to serve faculty across the University.

VIDEO ARCHIVED

October 4, 2022 Navigating Through the Peer-Review Process

Time: 10-11:30am ET
Location: Zoom
Co-Hosts: Elsevier and Pitt's HSLS
Description: Navigating the peer-review process is a complex, yet essential skill for anyone in academia. Combining the perspective and experience of an "outsider" (as an author and university administrator) and "insider" (as a reviewer and editor, and as a publisher), this workshop demystified the peer-review process, focusing on the "reviewer" experience.

October 13, 2022 K99/R00: Pathway to Independence Award

Time: 3:30-5pm ET
Location: Zoom
Presenter: Cesar G. Escobar-Viera, PhD, MD
Panelists: Sarah Hengel, PhD, Trayambak Pathak, PhD, Kristin Smith-Edwards, PhD, and Natasha Tilston-Lunel, PhD
Description: The K99/R00, or "Pathway to Independence" award, helps trainees transition from a mentored postdoctoral research position to an independent research position. Applicants do not have to be US citizens or permanent residents, making this a popular funding mechanism for trainees. Because of the complexity of the application process, this standalone session was developed to help you learn how to successfully write one by learning from those who have already done so. Dr. Escobar-Viera provided an overview of the K99/R00 application. Panelists then talked about their own experiences in writing successful applications and shared how they personalized different sections to showcase their strengths and future research goals.

If you didn't attend the September 7th "Know Your K" session, we encourage you to view the recording on the OACD’s website before watching this session.

Presenter's Bio:

Cesar G. Escobar-Viera, PhD, MD, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Program for Internet Delivered Interventions on LGBTQA+ Mental Health (PRIDE iM) at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Originally from the country of Paraguay, he is a psychiatrist and health services researcher with a master's degree in public health. As researcher, Dr. Escobar-Viera’s mission is to reducing mental health inequities among sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth and young adults through developing and testing social media-based interventions. Among other projects, he is the principal investigator of an NIMHD funded K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award that seeks to determine the influence of social media experiences on mental health outcomes among SGM young adults. When not thinking about ways to improve SGM people's mental health, he likes to spend time with his husband and their dog Benito, hiking, camping, traveling, going to concerts, and listening to music from the 20th century.

Panelists' Bios:

Sarah R. Hengel, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Kara Bernstein’s Lab (Penn). My work has been supported by a Hillman Cancer Fellowship for Innovative Cancer Research, an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship and now a K99/R00 Grant from the NIEHS. Historically, proteins in DNA repair have had defined roles within specific pathways, but recent work in our field has illuminated crosstalk between DNA repair proteins in other repair scenarios. My work is focused on the intersection of how chemical agents from our environment cause DNA damage and how “canonical” proteins in a pathway called homologous recombination fix these DNA lesions during another repair pathway which resolves replication stress. I will start my own laboratory at Tufts in the Biology Department in Sept 2023 and focus on uncovering the underlying mechanisms of how DNA damage at replication forks contribute to genetic instability and cancer.

Trayambak Pathak, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Vascular Medicine Institute at the University of Pittsburgh where he works in the lab of Dr. Mohamed Trebak. He was trained as a neuroscientist during graduate school and obtained mammalian physiology training during his postdoctoral period. His aim is to understand the basic molecular mechanism that regulates obesity and to develop a novel non-invasive therapeutic strategy for obesity. Dr. Pathak received his K99/R00 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in April 2022 to investigate store-operated Orai3 calcium channels in metabolism and obesity.

Kristen Smith-Edwards, PhD, investigates the neural circuits of the Gut-Brain Axis that control colon motility, visceral pain, and inflammation. During her post-doctoral training with Dr. Brian Davis at the University of Pittsburgh, she developed in vivo/ex vivo electrophysiological and optogenetic approaches to manipulate and record neural activity while simultaneously measuring colonic contractions. She was awarded an F32 from the NIDDK to study neural circuits in a mouse model for Hirschsprung’s disease, an enteric neurodevelopmental disorder. She then received her K99/R00 (also from the NIDDK), to investigate neuro-immune-microbiome interactions that contribute to Hirschsprung-associated enterocolitis and inflammation. Dr. Smith-Edwards recently transitioned to the R00 phase of the award as an Assistant Professor at Mayo Clinic in the Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Natasha Tilston-Lunel, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Vaccine Research (CVR) at the University of Pittsburgh. She has a Ph.D. in Molecular Virology from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. In 2020, Dr. Tilston-Lunel was awarded a K99/R00 to study how bunyaviruses evolve through a process called reassortment. Bunyaviruses are a large and diverse group of viruses with segmented negative-sense RNA genomes. Reassortment is a process where intact genes are exchanged between co-infecting viruses. Reassortment amongst influenza viruses is a well-established driver of host range and virulence. However, amongst bunyaviruses, the underlying mechanisms and potential outcomes of reassortment are unknown. Dr. Tilston-Lunel is now in the process of moving to the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Indiana University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. The R00 phase of the award will allow her to establish an independent research program identifying the genetic determinants that govern bunyavirus reassortment, define the contributions of virus and host, and link viral genetics to pathogenesis. This work feeds into the ultimate goal of developing rationally designed bunyavirus vaccines.

November 1, 2022 Mock K Award Study Section

Time: 3-5pm ET
Location: Zoom
Presenters: Michael Gold, PhD, Maisa Feghali, MD, MS, and Amery Treble-Barna, PhD
Description: K awards, or the NIH’s Mentored Career Development Awards, are the NIH’s most common mechanism for supporting early career investigators. Watch as Pitt faculty with extensive study section experience review applications as part of a mock K study section. During this session, led by Dr. Michael Gold, you will be able to not only observe what a study section is like, but to also receive inside information regarding the study section review process.

If you didn't attend the September 7th "Know Your K" session, view the recording on the OACD’s website in advance of this session, then watch this program to take a closer look at the workings of a study section.

Presenter Bios: Dr. Gold is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California Los Angeles in 1994 under the mentorship of Dr. John Liebeskind and received post-doctoral training in neuropharmacology and biophysics at the Universities of California San Francisco and Los Angeles under the mentorship of Drs. Jon Levine and Anna-Maria Correa, respectively. Dr. Gold began his academic career at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1998 under the chairmanship of Dr. Ron Dubner. In 2006 he was recruited to Pittsburgh by Dr. Jerry Gebhart, where he runs a lab focused on peripheral mechanisms of pain. His research in this field has focused on identification of factors, most commonly voltage-, Ca2+-, and ligand-gated ion channels, that enable sensory neurons to contribute to persistent pain, such as that associated with chronic inflammation or nerve injury. He serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Pain, the Journal of Pain Research, and the Neurobiology of Pain. Dr. Gold served on the scientific program committee for the Society for Neuroscience, the American Pain Society, and the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Dr. Gold was elected to the Council of the IASP in 2012 and served as the IASP liaison to the American Pain Society Board. Dr. Gold is currently President of the US Association for the Study of Pain. Dr. Gold provides ongoing service on scientific advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health (which includes close to 50 panels focused on training grants), the Department of Defense and foreign funding agencies such as the Welcome Trust.

Dr. Maisa Feghali is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology who focuses on caring for pregnant women with diabetes. She earned her BS/MD at the American University of Beirut and subsequently completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at MedStar Georgetown Washington Hospital Center and a fellowship in Maternal Fetal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where she later joined the faculty. Dr. Feghali is now the Director or the Diabetes in Pregnancy Program at Magee Womens Hospital of UPMC, which cares for over 1,000 pregnant women with diabetes in Southwestern Pennsylvania every year. Dr. Feghali is committed to transforming the treatment of diabetes in pregnancy by tailoring therapy to personal preferences and individual physiology.

Dr. Amery Treble-Barna, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Clinical & Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She directs a clinical research program aiming to account for unexplained heterogeneity in neurobehavioral recovery following pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) with the long-term goal of moving the field towards precision medicine to improve individual prognostication, predict response to rehabilitation, and identify novel targets for treatment development. She serves as PI on K01 and R03 grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and several internal and foundation grants. Dr. Treble-Barna has served as a reviewer on several NIH Career Development Award study sections.

December 1, 2022 Developing a Successful Grant Fellowship Application: A Primer for Postdocs & Graduate Students

Time: 3-5pm ET
Location: Zoom
Presenter: Nick Giannoukakis, PhD
Description: Attend this session to learn how to write a successful fellowship (F30, F31, and F32) applications! The purpose of the NIH F-type training grant is to provide support to promising graduate and post-doctoral applicants who have the potential to become productive, independent investigators in health-related research fields relevant to the missions of participating NIH institutes. This session will start with an overview of the F-award and then illuminate the grant submission/review process, outline how to prepare a successful grant, describe a mock study section, and cover scoring and funding. It will be presented by Nick Giannoukakis, PhD, a member of the Division of Experimental Pathology and a member of the Cellular and Molecular Pathology Graduate Training Program, who has a successful track record mentoring graduate students and postdocs who have forged independent research careers.

Presenter Bio: Nick Giannoukakis, PhD, began his scientific studies at McGill University (Montreal, Canada), receiving his B.Sc. and Ph.D. in 1992 and 1997, respectively. He then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the fields of gene and cell therapy for autoimmune disease and transplantation tolerance. He held the position of Associate Professor of Pathology and Immunology and he was also a member of the Division of Experimental Pathology and the Cellular and Molecular Pathology Graduate Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In the summer of 2014, he joined the Allegheny Health Network as part of the newly-created Institute of Cellular Therapeutics where he continues his translational medicine research endeavors in the following major areas: i) Immunomodulation approaches for the treatment of autoimmune disease and transplantation tolerance; ii) Regulatory immune cells; iii) Immunomodulation-based clinical trials for diabetes mellitus (type 1 and type 2). As an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, he teaches topics on pancreas and thyroid development and pathology, cell and gene therapy approaches in diabetes mellitus, and immunobiotherapeutics in courses offered by the Department of Pathology and the Department of Immunology. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs and teaches the Molecular and Cellular Immunology course. He has mentored graduate, MD/PhD students, as well as clinical fellows who have evolved into outstanding clinicians, research scientists and academic faculty in the USA, Europe, and Asia. Dr. Giannoukakis is considered a pioneer in the field of tolerogenic dendritic cell therapy for autoimmunity as he was the first to demonstrate the safety and potential efficacy of these cells in preserving the function of the residual insulin-producing cells of the pancreas in type 1 diabetic patients. He is a primary inventor on a number of patents related to gene, cell, and nanoparticle vaccine therapy for autoimmunity and he is one of the founders of RezQ Bio, a biotechnology entity leveraging dendritic cell and nanoparticle vaccine therapy for autoimmunity. He is a regular member of the NIH NIDDK NRSA Fellowship panel and the NSF Drug Delivery and Drug Development SBIR panel.

January 26, 2023 Landing that First NIH Grant: Advice for New and Early-Stage Investigators *VIEW RECORDING*

Time: 3:30-5pm
Location: Zoom
Presenter: Rosemarie Hunziker, PhD
Description: NIH is committed to nurturing the next generation of researchers to keep the biomedical innovation pipeline flowing. There are many unique opportunities and special considerations available to junior investigators, but they are not always obvious. If you are a "newbie" to NIH funding, this presentation is for you! An ex-NIH Program Director walked you through your options and realistically pointed you in the right direction. This presentation covers the funding opportunities and strategies used by NIH to kick-start careers. Both targeted initiatives and avoiding traps in writing grant applications will be discussed.

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Presenter Bio: Rosemarie Hunziker, PhD, is an independent Biomedical Research consultant, with key competencies in: strategic positioning for research portfolios, grant writing assistance, and proposal review, particularly in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. She earned her PhD in Reproductive Immunology under Tom Wegmann at the University of Alberta (Canada). Before retiring at the end of 2018, Rosemarie was a federal scientist for three decades—including 15+ years at NIH (Program Director at NIDCR and NIBIB), preceded by 4 years in Biotechnology and Tissue Engineering at the Advanced Technology Program (NIST). She had programmatic oversight of discovery and applied research grants, spanning the gamut from high-risk/high-reward research to translational and small business awards. Dr. Hunziker brings a diverse background to this broad sphere of research, including experience in Microbiology, Immunogenetics and Immunochemistry, Developmental Biology, Animal Husbandry, Molecular Biology, Stem Cell Technologies, Tissue Engineering (most recently in the Tissue Chips and Cell Manufacturing programs) and Regenerative Medicine, Biomaterials, ImmunoEngineering and Technology Transfer. Rosemarie’s honors include four NIH Director’s awards (for accomplishments in establishing the Multi-Agency Tissue Engineering Science (MATES) Working Group, standing up the NIH’s MicroPhysiological Systems program, organizing awards under the CARES Act Regenerative Medicine Innovation Project, and outreach to NIH’s collaboration with the Defense Department on the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine) and election to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Rosemarie has most recently also joined the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute | BioFabUSA as part-time Director of Strategic Partnerships.

March 1, 2023 Get Your Research Published: Utilizing Health Research Reporting Guidelines from Project Development to Manuscript Submission

Provided by University of Pittsburgh, Health Sciences Library System (HSLS)

Time: 10-11:30am
Location: Virtual
Instructor: Helena VonVille
Description: CONSORT, the first health research reporting guideline, was initially published in 1996. Since then, hundreds of reporting guidelines and guideline extensions have been developed to improve the reporting of health research, all designed with the aims of: describing methods clearly and transparently, improving the reporting of protocol deviations, and ensuring a complete report of results that flows from background to study objectives to methods.

After taking this class, participants will be able to:

Identify the HSLS LibGuide that links to reporting guidelines
Explain the differences between reporting guidelines and guideline extensions
Describe how both reporting guidelines and critical appraisal tools can be used throughout the life cycle of a project, from development to dissemination

A link to class materials will be provided during the class; an email will be sent to participants after the class with the link as well.

March 2, 2023 P Grants: How to Level Up with Vision, Collaboration, and Impact *VIEW RECORDING*

Time: 3:30-5pm
Location: Zoom
Moderator: Charles S Sfeir, DDS, PhD
Speakers: Michael Boninger, MD, Satdarshan S. Monga, MD, Anuradha Ray, PhD, Heath Skinner, MD, PhD, Beth Stronach, PhD, and Sally Wenzel, MD
Description: Have you been successfully funded by R-mechanism grants, built relationships and collaborations, and are looking to advance your research career by asking larger questions and addressing more significant issues? Then this session is for you! Pitt faculty shared their experiences with P grants that have funded programs, centers, and consortia. They described components of their grants and how they developed productive and long-term collaborations, discussed challenges, shared tips and strategies, and answered questions from attendees. At the end, a new Pitt initiative to help support you in developing successful P grant applications was announced.

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Moderator Bio:
Charles S Sfeir, DDS, PhD, is the Associate Dean for Research, Director of the Center for Craniofacial Regeneration, and Chairman of the Department of Periodontics at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Sfeir has secondary appointments in the departments of Oral Craniofacial Sciences, Bioengineering, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He received a DDS from the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France. He also earned an MS in Periodontology, and a PhD in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. His research is multidisciplinary and translational in nature, focusing on developing therapies for craniofacial and dental diseases. Recently he has focused on 1) developing dental devices using resorbable metals for bone and periodontal regeneration. 2) novel treatment for periodontal disease by modulating the immune system. Dr. Sfeir’s research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense. Among his latest federally funded research activities, Dr. Sfeir is principal investigator (multi PI) of the NIH funded Michigan-Pittsburgh-Wyss Resource Center to accelerate craniomaxillofacial technologies toward FDA submissions.

Overview of P Mechanism:
Beth Stronach, PhD, has been an academic research scientist for over a dozen years. After receiving a PhD in Biology from the University of Utah in 1997 and pursuing postdoctoral work in Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Beth moved to Pittsburgh in 2002. Since then, she has been a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh, first in the Dept. of Biological Sciences, then in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Dept. at the School of Medicine. Her research focused on understanding how cells organize into complex tissues during organism development. Currently, Beth is a scientist administrator at the University of Pittsburgh Office of Research for the Health Sciences focusing on grant writing, reviewing, and editing.

Panelist Bios:
Michael Boninger, MD, is a Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. He has joint appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering, Rehabilitation Science and Technology and the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Boninger is also President of UPMC Innovative Homecare Solutions (IHS). IHS is a payer and provider company that provides innovative care in the community setting. Dr. Boninger is also the Chief Medical Sustainability Officer for UPMC, helping to lead UPMC’s efforts to decrease the environmental impact of its operations. Dr. Boninger is currently co-PI of the Alliance for Regenerative Rehabilitation Research and Training, which is funded by a P2C center grant. The P2C mechanism is for creating/advancing national research infrastructure in a specific area. Dr. Boninger has also been the PI on a R01, which was part of a program project grant. Dr. Boninger has an extensive publication record of around 300 papers. His central research focus is on enabling increased function and participation for individuals with disabilities through development and application of assistive, rehabilitative and regenerative technologies. Dr. Boninger also has extensive experience and publications related to training researchers. Dr. Boninger holds 4 United States patents and has received numerous honors, including being inducted into the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.

Satdarshan S. Monga, MD, is an Academic Physician with an interest in furthering our understanding of many aspects of liver health and disease. He is currently the UPMC Endowed Chair for Experimental Pathology, and Professor of Pathology and Medicine. He serves as the Vice Chair and Chief of the Division of Experimental Pathology. He is the founding director of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center (PLRC), an NIDDK’s P30-funded Silvio O Conte Digestive Diseases Research Core Centers. This center of around 85 members supports continued high impact work of these investigators and physicians in the fundamental, translational, and clinical areas in hepatic health and disease by providing optimum research and collaborative infrastructure. The members of the center broadly study regenerative medicine, chronic liver injury and tumorigenesis, and utilize highly innovative research core services including cell and tissue imaging, clinical tissue biobanking, genomics and systems biology, and synthetic biology. He is also the program director of a NIH-funded T32 predoctoral training grants on Regenerative Medicine and serves as the Assistant Dean and co-Director for the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at our institution. He also serves as the Associate Director of the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute helping with the timely initiatives in the field. For the last 24 years, Dr. Monga’s lab has been focused on elucidated the cellular and molecular underpinnings of hepatic pathophysiology especially of liver development, repair, and tumorigenesis. His research has been consistently funded by NIH and industry since 2003 and he is currently PI/MPI on four R01s and four sponsored research agreements with biotech companies He has over 195 manuscripts and reviews in peer-reviewed journals like Hepatology, Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology, American Journal of Pathology, Cell Metabolism, Cell Reports, Cell Reports Medicine, and others. He is also the editor-in-chief for the Seminars in Liver Disease and associate, consulting or advising editor for Science Signaling, Annual Reviews in Pathology and JCI Insights. He has won numerous awards for both his scientific contributions as well as for his mentoring. He received Outstanding Investigator Award and Robbins Distinguished Educator Award from ASIP. He has received Takeda Distinguished Research Award from the American Physiology Society. He was inducted into American Society for Clinical Investigations. Recently, he received “You Make a Difference Award” from the Community Liver Alliance.

Anuradha Ray, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine and Immunology and Endowed Chair of Lung Immunology in Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She received her PhD from Calcutta University in India and underwent postdoctoral training at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and at Rockefeller University in New York. She was on the faculty at Rockefeller University and at Yale University between the years 1990 and 2001 before moving to the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Ray's early research led to the identification of a central mechanism underlying the anti-inflammatory effects of steroid hormones and the discovery of an essential role of GATA-3 in Th2 differentiation and Th2-mediated allergic asthma. The primary goal of Dr. Ray's current research is to understand immune mechanisms that drive severe steroid-refractory asthma that incurs more than 28 billion dollars annually in healthcare costs in the US. This research has identified an unexpected deleterious role of Type 1 inflammation/IFN-gamma in a subset of severe asthma patients driving steroid resistance and potentially inflammaging, a topic of her current interest. Her research has been continuously funded by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health (NHI). This includes a P01 grant from NIAID with Sally Wenzel as Co-PI that was just renewed. Drs. Ray and Wenzel have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration for >10 years to study immune dysfunction in severe asthma. She has received awards from the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI) in recognition of her scientific contributions to studies of immune mechanisms of asthma. She recently completed her term as an elected member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the NIH.

Heath Skinner, MD, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Skinner completed a combined MD/PhD program at West Virginia University, followed by a residency in Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center where he remained on as faculty until joining the Hillman Cancer Center in 2018. Over the course of his career, Dr. Skinner's laboratory has been continuously funded, including two current R01s funding his research. Drs. Skinner and Ferris received a Head and Neck P50 Research Center Grant for Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE). This grant focuses on the intersection of tumor immunology, genomics and head and neck cancer, seeking to personalize therapy utilizing three projects, each associated with at least one clinical trial. Dr. Skinner has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Nature Cell Biology, Cancer Cell, Oncogene, Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, and JAMA Oncology. In addition, he has written six book chapters, nine invited reviews and presented more than 50 abstracts at national meetings. Dr. Skinner is a clinical trial safety officer for the NIDCR and is active in national committees guiding oncologic clinical practice and research, including the NCI HN Steering Committee's Previously Unresected Locally Advanced Task Force and the VA/NIDCR Oropharynx Cancer committee, in addition to being a co-chairman on the NCI TP53 Clinical Trial Planning Committee. His educational track record has been recognized by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society of Radiation Oncology, and the American Board of Radiology, the latter being the accrediting body for radiation oncologists.

Sally Wenzel, MD, completed her MD degree at the University of Florida and spent 19 years at National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado before moving to the University of Pittsburgh. She received numerous awards from the American Thoracic Society and the European Respiratory Society. She is currently Director of the University of Pittsburgh Asthma and Environmental Lung Health Institute at UPMC, and Chair for the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, at the School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Wenzel has a passion for improving the understanding of the prevention and treatment of asthma, in particular severe asthma, where both genetic and environmental factors are likely to be playing a role. She has performed research bronchoscopies on hundreds of asthma patients, studies critical to identifying the heterogeneity of asthma, including the influence of T2, T1 and innate immunity. Her current bench-lab interests include the role of epithelial cells in the modulation of redox balance, inflammation, mucus production and clearance in the airways. She now chairs the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is leading efforts to address the effects of the environment and its various pollutants to impact oxidative stress in airway epithelial cells of asthmatic patients. She has authored more than 350 publications and is the recipient of numerous awards including the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Presidential Award in 2017, the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Foundation Breathing for Life 2016 Award, and the ATS Amberson Lecture in 2021 for her career work in all aspects of asthma. As Chair of Environmental and Occupational Health, she is dedicated to improving the air and water quality of our region and its disproportionate impact on the health of people of color.

March 16, 2023 Untapped Potential: DOD Funding 101 for Health Science Researchers *VIEW RECORDING*

Time: 4-5pm
Location: Zoom
Presenters: Ron Poropatich, MD, MS; Adam Frisch, MD
Description: The Department of Defense is an underutilized source of funding for researchers, and Pitt has resources to help you succeed! The DOD is obligated to award $7.67B in grants in 2022 alone, with up to $10B in additional funding over five years through a separate mechanism. The Center for Military Medicine Research (CMMR) at Pitt facilitates innovative collaborations and helps to develop winning grant proposals with the goal of advancing medicine for wounded service members and their families. Watch this session to learn about DOD funding opportunities, hear an overview of how to get funded by the DOD, and learn tips on how to successfully apply. Finally, hear a Pitt faculty member’s experience applying for and receiving DOD funding and how that has benefited his career.

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Presenter Bios:

Ronald K. Poropatich, MD, MS, is the Director of the Center for Military Medicine Research and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an experienced Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine physician who served 30 years on active duty in the US Army retiring in 2012 at the rank of Colonel with extended assignments at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD, the US Army Medical Research and Development Command, Fort Detrick, MD and in overseas deployed settings (Somalia, Iraq & Afghanistan). He received his medical degree from Drexel University in 1985. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD as well as his fellowships in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Poropatich is a long-standing educator/researcher with expertise in telemedicine, autonomous pre-hospital care and pulmonary/critical care medicine. He has over 80 publications in peer-reviewed medical journals, numerous book chapters, and edited 2 books on Telemedicine. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine in Medicine, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Chest Physicians, the American Telemedicine Association, and the American Institute for Medical Biological Engineering.

Adam Frisch, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Research Liaison of Emergency Medicine Residency, and Emergency Department Attending Physician for the University of Pittsburgh Department of Emergency Medicine. He is also the Medical Director for Clinical Analytics for UPMC Emergency Medicine and Vice Chair of the University IRB. Dr. Frisch earned his MD from Albany Medical College in 2008, and completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, as well as a MA in Clinical Research at the University of Pittsburgh in 2013.

May 9, 2023 Pilot Data: Hedging Your Bets for Future Academic Success *VIEW RECORDING*

Time: 3-4:30pm
Location: Zoom
Moderator: Alok Joglekar, PhD
Panelists: Kenneth Fish, PhD, Michele Levine, PhD, and Marlies Meisel, PhD
Description: Key pilot data are the foundation of your next poster, grant proposal, paper, and independent research career. What are the different ways to approach collecting this critical information? How do you ensure that you are successfully collecting key pilot data that will lead to future successes and a stable, long-term research career? What are the pitfalls that you need to steer clear of? View this session to hear from Pitt faculty who are successfully navigating the same challenges that you face, and learn tips and tricks that you can apply in your own labs.

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Moderator Bio:

Alok Joglekar, PhD, completed his PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the guidance of Dr. Donald B Kohn, where he focused on gene therapy using site-specific nucleases. Upon graduating, Dr. Joglekar completed his postdoctoral research at California Institute of Technology in Dr. David Baltimore's lab, focusing initially on the role of T cells in natural control of HIV infection. While in the Baltimore lab, he began working on cell engineering using chimeric receptors and created a cell-based T cell epitope discovery method. In 2019, Dr. Joglekar started his lab at the Center for Systems Immunology and the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, where he focuses on understanding T cell mediated immune responses using systems approaches and creative engineering.

Panelist Bios:

Kenneth Fish, PhD, focuses his research on developing effective therapies for people with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is thought to result from the complex interplay of numerous genetic variants affecting liability and environmental risk factors that alter the developmental trajectories of neuronal circuits. Despite this etiological diversity, alterations in cortical GABA neurons are a highly conserved feature of schizophrenia and substantial data suggest that these alterations contribute to cognitive dysfunction in the disease. In humans, most GABA neurons can be differentiated into non-overlapping subtypes based on the expression of parvalbumin, calbindin, calretinin, or cholecystokinin. These four non-overlapping GABA neuron subtypes are themselves each composed of distinct transcriptionally-unique subtypes (TUS) that are the products of specific transcription programs. These GABA TUS uniquely target distinct pyramidal neuron (PN) ensembles. By occupying distinct niches in specific PN ensembles, GABA TUS can powerfully modulate certain brain-wide networks and behaviors. Dr. Fish’s research uses advance microscopy and single cell methodologies, developed and refined over the last 25 years, to identify the affected GABA TUS in SZ and study how the synaptic connections made by these cells, potential pharmacological targets, are altered in the disease. These studies are essential for moving towards a mechanistic understanding of the cortical circuitry alterations in the illness.

Michele Levine, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist, is Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. She directs a T32 and an affiliated clinical psychology internship training program at Western Psychiatric Hospital, both of which support clinical research training for clinical scientists. Dr. Levine’s program of research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2002 and focuses on relationships among health behaviors and mental health during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Marlies Meisel, PhD, received her PhD in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2012 where she studied the molecular mechanism of how Th17 cells mediate a preclinical model of multiple sclerosis. From 2013-2018, Dr. Meisel was a postdoc in Bana Jabris’ lab at the University of Chicago where she studied how the gut microbiota impacts inflammatory bowel disease and mediates haematologic cancer. Dr. Meisel has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine since 2018, where she studies how the gut and tissue microbiome impacts systemic immunity during autoimmunity and cancer.

May 30, 2023 Increasing Your Research Visibility

Provided by University of Pittsburgh, Health Sciences Library System (HSLS)

Time: 2-3pm
Location: Virtual
Instructor: Stephen Gabrielson
Description: In this session, they will discuss how making informed publishing decisions and managing your online researcher identity are effective ways to increase the visibility of your research. Different types of open access publishing models, including free ways to share your work, will be discussed. They will then take a deeper dive into how an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCiD) helps distinguish yourself from other researchers, keeps your scholarly record up to date, and automates other researcher profile systems to showcase your impact. Students, faculty, and staff are all welcome to attend.

After this class, participants will be able to:

Describe how publishing choices affect your research visibility.
Describe the benefits of using ORCiD.
Register for an ORCiD and add your works.
Compare different researcher profile systems and choose the ones that are right for you.

Class materials will be made available to class registrants. This class will not be recorded.

June 12, 2023 Evaluating Journals: Discovering Where to Publish

Provided by University of Pittsburgh, Health Sciences Library System (HSLS)

Time: 11-12:30pm
Location: Virtual
Instructor: Stephen Gabrielson
Description: This session will cover a wide range of publishing topics to help you find a relevant and reputable journal to publish your work. Topics will include readership, journal matching tools, funder requirements, open access publishing models, and more. Time will also be spent on how to evaluate journals based upon best publication practices and ethical standards to avoid submitting your work to low quality journals. Learn how to efficiently keep track of all of this information to compare your publishing options in one spot.

Anyone who publishes, or has an interest in publishing, is welcome to attend.

After this class, participants will be able to:

Describe the major factors that influence where to submit your work.
Assess journal quality based on factors such as journal operations, discoverability, transparency, and trustworthiness.
Collect information about journals to help determine where to submit.