In June, the Department of Internal Medicine recognized six individuals – two faculty, one fellow, one resident, one staff member and one medical student – for their specific research accomplishments at the Seventeenth Annual Internal Medicine Research Awards.
Susan Swindells, MBBS, professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Terry K. Watanabe Chair for HIV/AIDS Research and Care and Medical Director of the HIV Clinic, was given the department’s Career Research Award for her enormous contributions in the area of HIV research.
As the guiding force and sustaining leader of the HIV clinic, where approximately 1500 HIV-infected patients are served, the clinic has been the focal point for extensive clinical and translational research and education, said Mark Rupp, MD, chief, Division of Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Swindells has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, over a dozen book chapters, numerous textbooks, edited journals and had countless abstracts. She has also been continuously funded from a variety of funding sources even prior to her joining the UNMC faculty in 1991.
Dr. Swindells has been recognized with a Red Ribbon Award and a Shining Star Award from the Nebraska AIDS project. She has a national reputation for her work and has served on numerous committees for the NIH and the AIDS Clinical Trials Group including chairing the Tuberculosis Work Group. She also chaired the Antiretroviral Sustained Release Formulation Focus Group. She is a sought after speaker, nationally and internationally, with over 100 invited presentations to her credit.
Diana Florescu, MD, received the Internal Medicine Clinical Research Award for her work in the areas of solid organ transplant ID, particularly for recognition and treatment of adenovirus infections and the importance of hypogammaglobulinemia in transplant recipients.
In her 10 years on faculty at UNMC, Dr. Florescu has published 63 peer-reviewed articles – 37 of which she is the first author – in journals like Clinical Infectious Diseases, Transplantation and American Journal of Transplantation. She has been a speaker at the annual conference of the Infectious Disease Society of America, the annual meeting of the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology, and international conferences in Buenos Aires and Switzerland. She has been awarded extramural funding from numerous industrial sources.
Kunut Kijsirichareanchai, MD, received the departmental Fellowship Research Award for his work with Alex Hewlett, DO,MS, in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. According to his nominator, “he worked incredibly hard to develop a research arm of the GI Motility Program from the ground up.” Dr. Kijsirichareancha’s main project was the creation of a large database of high resolution manometries, 24-hour impedance pH studies and BRAVO pH studies to better understand the role of “Esophageal Dysmotility in Non-Erosive Esophageal Reflux Disease (NERD).”
Dr. Kijsirichareanchai’s efforts resulted in an abstract at the American Gastrointestinal Association DDW Annual Scientific Meeting.
Javen Wunschel, DO, received the department’s Resident Research Award for work she did with Jill Poole, MD, in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy and her demonstration of early and continuing research interests including work that resulted in a poster at the American College of Physicians Nebraska-South Dakota Regional Meeting in 2015 and the Society of Hospital Medicine National Meeting in 2016.
During an elective in allergy and immunology, Dr. Wunschel researched and presented a case conference on the potential role of allergy immunotherapy for patients with eosinophilic esophagitis. Then during a one-month research elective in her second year of residency, Dr. Wunschel completed a research project with Dr. Poole and was first author on a review article titled “Occupational agriculture organic dust exposures and its relationship to asthma and airway inflammation,” published in the Journal of Asthma.
Dr. Wunschel also started working on two other projects with Dr. Poole, a case series on the mirena progesterone IUD and its association with adverse allergic reactions and another on the emerging concerns of insects as food and the potential relationship to food allergic individuals.
Art Heires was the recipient of the Daughton Research Award for non-faculty members. One of his nominators, of which there were several in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy, said “Art has and will continue to serve the Pulmonary Division above and beyond ‘the call of duty’ in his role as a laboratory technician.”
He has authored 22 peer-reviewed publications. He has presented at national meetings. He serves as a resource to several investigators in addition to his direct supervisor. His nominators mention that he is known for taking meticulous pride in his work, and that he designs controls in his experiments that others may overlook. He has also contributed professional-quality diagrams, models and images for grants and manuscripts.
Daniel Penrice received the department’s Medical Student Research Award for work he did with Carol Casey, PhD, in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Daniel began in Dr. Casey’s laboratory as a Summer Undergraduate Alcohol Research Student and continued working with the lab while completing his bachelor’s degree, during the summer before his first year of medical school and between his first and second year of medical school. He has clearly demonstrated an early commitment to research.
Work he participated in was published in February 2016 in BMC Gastroenterology with Daniel being the second author after first author, Karuna Rasineni. The article title is “Alcoholic vs non-alcoholic fatty liver in rats: distinct differences in endocytosis and vesicle trafficking despite similar pathology.”