Faculty award winner: Carol Casey, Ph.D.

Carol Casey, Ph.D., will receive the Outstanding Faculty Mentor of Junior Faculty Award at the April 20 annual faculty meeting.

• Name: Carol Casey, Ph.D.
• Title: Professor of internal medicine, section of gastroenterology, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UNMC, and research career scientist, Omaha Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center.
• Joined UNMC:1984
• Hometown: Mitchell, S.D.

With how many junior faculty members do you work?

About five or six at the present time. I have been so fortunate to have had such bright young investigators either working directly with me or closely associated, at the VA and UNMC, who are interested in some aspect of our work involving alcoholic liver disease.

What are the greatest rewards of mentoring?
I love it when I can contribute in any small way to the success of younger scientists. This is through sharing methodology or equipment, guiding their research, introducing them to national and international peers and sharing grant resources and examples for grant applications. We have a talented and passionate group of young scientists at UNMC and hopefully they will all find success. It is really an honor for me to work with them.

Describe a moment when you realized your influence made a difference in someone’s career.

About two years ago, Armen Petrosyan, Ph.D., assistant professor, biochemistry, wanted to expand his work on golgi fragmentation to the field of alcoholic liver injury. He asked me to be a mentor for his NIH application, which was funded. I think that his positive score was helped by my mentoring and letters of support.

Then Karuna Rasineni, Ph.D., (now an instructor in internal medicine) applied for her permanent residency while a postdoctoral associate in our laboratory. The status would allow her to work in the U.S. and apply for grants through the NIH. She needed letters from other U.S. scientists with whom she had collaborated, so while we attended a national alcohol meeting we asked those alcohol researchers to help support Karuna’s effort. During the next few days, three of these prominent investigators wrote letters for Karuna, and she heard the next week that her application was approved. Her lawyer indicated that these letters were very important, and I was honored to be the “middleman” in this case.

List three things few people know about you.

• I grew up on a farm outside of Mitchell, S.D., the oldest of eight. I graduated from eighth grade from a one-room country school.
• I grew up playing pinochle with my family, still love to play and am part of a card group that has been meeting once a month for the past 10 years.
• I like to watch “Wheel of Fortune” whenever I can and hope to get on the game someday.