Five University of Nebraska Medical Center researchers will receive this year’s Internal Medicine Research Awards for outstanding achievements and research accomplishments:
- Howard Gendelman, M.D. — Career Excellence Award, given to an established faculty member at the professor level for excellence in his or her research career.
- Frederick Hamel, Ph.D. — Basic Science Research Award, given to a faculty member for excellence in a basic science research program.
- Jane Potter, M.D. — Clinical Research Award, given to a faculty member for excellence in a clinical research program.
- Amit Arora, M.D. — Fellowship Research Award, given to a fellow for excellence in a research project.
- Arthi Sanjeevi, M.D. — Resident Research Award, given to a resident who has demonstrated excellence in a specific research project.
The research awards will be presented at a special internal medicine grand rounds on Friday, June 13, at the Eppley Science Hall Amphitheater. Each recipient will have a poster on display in the ESH lobby beginning at 11:30 a.m. Dr. Gendelman’s presentation, titled “Unraveling the Mysteries of Communication Between the Brain and Immune System,” will take place after the awards presentation, which begins at noon.
Dr. Gendelman, professor, the David T. Purtilo Distinguished Chair of Pathology and Microbiology and director of the Nebraska Center for Neurovirology and Neurodegenerative Disorders, is recognized as one of the top neuroAIDS researchers both nationally and internationally. He was the first UNMC faculty member in 20 years to be selected as a Fulbright Research Scholar when he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Isreal in 2000. Dr. Gendelman has numerous NIH grants to support his basic research, which involves the field of neurologic complications of HIV infections, as well as the pathogenesis and therapy of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Dr. Gendelman joined the UNMC faculty in 1993.
Dr. Hamel, a professor in the section of diabetes, endocrinology and metabolism, has predominantly focused his research in the area of insulin signal transduction and insulin action. Much of his published work concerns insulin degrading enzyme (IDE), analyzing both its role in the degradation of insulin completing its action, and a new concept, initially proposed, in part, by Dr. Hamel, that IDE is also important to insulin action. Dr. Hamel’s research has been published in several scholarly journals. He has had a distinguished career as evidenced by continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. He came to UNMC as an assistant professor in 1987.
Dr. Potter, the Neumann M. and Mildred E. Harris Geriatric Professor and chief of the section of geriatrics and gerontology, was instrumental in establishing The Geriatric Assessment Program at UNMC, for which she serves as medical director. She is a leading champion for geriatric care training among physicians and is the primary investigator for a four-year, $2 million grant, “A Comprehensive Program to Strengthen Physicians’ Training in Geriatrics in Nebraska,” which was awarded to UNMC by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation in May 2001. Dr. Potter’s research has been published in countless scholarly journals, and she serves as a reviewer for many of those same publications. Dr. Potter joined the UNMC faculty in 1982.
Dr. Arora’s geriatrics/oncology fellowship has included several research activities. He presented, “Factors Predicting Screening Mammography Before and After Geriatric Assessment Clinic,” at the annual meeting of the American Geriatrics Society in May. He was selected to receive a Scholarship Award from the American Medical Director’s Association Futures Program. His article, “Older Patients with Colon Cancer: Is Adjuvant Chemotherapy Safe and Effective?” has been published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Arora graduated from Maulana Azad Medical College, University of New Delhi, where he completed a residency in orthopedics in 1995. He then did a residency in internal medicine at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn and practiced as a physician in Utah prior to his fellowship at UNMC.
Dr. Sanjeevi has worked with Sandeep Mukherjee, M.D., assistant professor in gastroenterology and hepatology, over the past 12 months to complete two research objectives. The first is performing a retrospective analysis on the outcomes of liver transplantation for cryptogenic cirrhosis at UNMC, and the second is to attempt to identify an association between nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and cryptogenic cirrhosis. Dr. Sanjeevi’s findings in each of the objectives were accepted for poster presentation and were published in abstract form at the 2003 Digestive Disease Week conference in May. Dr. Sanjeevi graduated from Chennai (India) Medical College, where she completed a compulsory residential rotatory internship before coming to UNMC. She began her residency in internal medicine in January 2001.