For Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Awareness Month, the September 2 episode of the University of Vermont’s Across the Fence program features cardiologist Richard L. Page, M.D., professor of medicine and dean of the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine. Speaking with program host Keith Silva, Dean Page explains AFib—an irregular heartbeat or arrhythmia—and its symptoms, causes, treatment options, and prevention, as well as the importance of early detection and management of this common but often underreported heart condition. Of special interest is new technology that allows you to monitor your heartbeats with your phone, watch, or other “wearables.”

Across the Fence is a daily 15-minute television program co-produced by UVM Extension and WCAX-TV informing viewers about activities being conducted by University of Vermont faculty, staff, and students that benefit viewers and their communities. The longest-running farm, home, and community television program in the country, Across the Fence airs weekdays at 12:15 p.m. on WCAX-TV Channel 3.

Watch Dean Page on Across the Fence

Larner Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine Richard Bounds, M.D., has been appointed interim chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine for the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine and the University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN), effective September 1, 2025. He succeeds Ramsey Herrington, M.D., who was appointed the department’s inaugural chair in 2022.

Bounds earned his medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and completed his residency in emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as chief resident in his final year. Upon joining Larner in 2017, he established the first Emergency Medicine Residency Program in Vermont. In 2019, he created Larner’s first post-graduate Medical Education Fellowship Program, laying the groundwork for three additional subspecialty fellowships. Due to the Division of Emergency Medicine’s academic and clinical success while under the Department of Surgery, Bounds played a key role in establishing an independent Department of Emergency Medicine at Larner in 2022 and was subsequently appointed division chief of education in 2023, executive vice chair in 2024, and acting chair for the UVM Health Network Medical Group Department of Emergency Medicine in 2025. A Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, he has been actively engaged with the Teaching Academy since 2017 and is a Master Teacher.

Bounds is a respected clinician-educator who has taught numerous courses, mentored students and faculty, and played a key role in curriculum development. He has received numerous local, regional, and national awards for teaching and service, including the Career Longevity Award from the Council of Residency Directors in Emergency Medicine, the Peter Weimersheimer Endowed Professorship in Emergency Medicine, and the Jerome S. Abrams Teaching Award for commitment to excellence in resident education. He is principal or co-principal investigator on several grants and has published peer-reviewed publications and numerous books and chapters.

The editorial board of Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBoC), the flagship journal of the American Society for Cell Biology, has selected a paper by first author Allison (Morrissey) Langley, a cellular, molecular, and biomedical sciences graduate student working in the Salogiannis Lab, and colleagues as the MBoC Paper of the Year for 2025. Langley has been invited to present the team’s research at the upcoming MBoC Award Webinar in October.

The paper, “Movement of the endoplasmic reticulum is driven by multiple classes of vesicles marked by Rab-GTPases,” was co-authored by Langley’s advisor, John Salogiannis, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, and members of his lab team—Sarah Abeling-Wang, lab research technician; and Erinn Wagner, then a UVM undergraduate biology major.

In related news, Salogiannis has been elected to the Early Career Editorial Board of MBoC. His selection “reflects MBoC’s genuine excitement about his research area and the communities he represents.”

Read more about Langley’s MBoC paper

Niccolo Fiorentino, Ph.D., associate professor of mechanical engineering and orthopaedics & rehabilitation (center), received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early-Career Development Program award, a prestigious grant that supports researchers who are early in their careers and undertaking new impactful projects. The $624,000 grant will support Fiorentino’s research on the relationship between cartilage microstructure and the risk of developing future musculoskeletal diseases, such as osteoarthritis.

Many osteoarthritis patients endure the pain until its severity necessitates a joint replacement; an estimated one million knee and hip replacements are completed each year. Fiorentino’s investigation aims to advance the field of cartilage biomechanics by quantifying microstructure and function across different age groups and varying degrees of joint health.

Read more about this grant and Dr. Fiorentino’s research

The Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Vermont recently welcomed Sarah Wold, Ph.D., to its Complex Proposals and Strategic Positioning Team, led by Heidi Malaby, Ph.D. Wold and Malaby will provide comprehensive support to increase the Larner College of Medicine’s grant proposal competitiveness with a focus on large ($10M+), complex proposals. They will also be working with Larner’s new Office of Research and Engagement to bolster research activity across the college.

Wold holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke University and comes to UVM from program officer roles at both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of General Medical Sciences as well as the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Division of Chemistry. Prior to her roles in the federal government, she was a tenured faculty member at Temple University, where she ran a research program with more than $2M in external support, including an NSF CAREER and an NIH R01. Malaby has supported proposals through UVM Research Development since 2019, contributing to over $60M in award funding. She previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at UVM.

UVM Research Development offers a suite of services for UVM researchers across all career levels, including an up-to-date, self-serve Resource Library and help with identifying and pursuing funding opportunities.

Jason Rengo, M.S., a graduate student in the cellular, molecular, and biomedical sciences (CMB) program working with advisor Mark Nelson, Ph.D., chair and University Distinguished Professor of pharmacology and co-director of the Vermont Center for Cardiovascular and Brain Health, has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to support his project on the origin of detrusor smooth muscle excitability.

Rengo earned a master’s degree in physiology from the University of Colorado–Boulder, then worked at the University of Vermont Medical Center as a senior exercise physiologist in the cardiac rehabilitation and prevention program, combining clinical care and research to improve patient outcomes and health care delivery. With a deepened interest in the mechanisms underlying the basis for clinical treatment decisions, he then embarked on a Ph.D. in the CMB graduate program. His research focuses on smooth muscle physiology and how it contributes to the function of blood vessels and the urinary bladder, with the aim of potentially developing new treatments to improve patients’ quality of life.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F99DK143563. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Most people with severe asthma have obesity. Metabolic dysfunction, often associated with obesity, is particularly associated with severe asthma, and the endocannabinoid system plays a significant role in metabolism.

Now a new study by 10 Larner-affiliated co-authors, along with colleagues at the University of Utah–Salt Lake City and Inversago Pharma Inc. in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, has found that a cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1R) inverse agonist induces weight loss and reduces airway hyperresponsiveness in a mouse model of obese asthma. The study, published in the American Journal of Physiology–Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, supports a significant contribution of metabolic factors related to the endocannabinoid system in lung compliance and airway reactivity and demonstrates the potential of CB1R inverse agonists to treat obese asthma.

The Larner co-authors include Vermont Lung Center faculty and staff Minara Aliyeva, M.D., Vikas Anathy, Ph.D., Jason Bates, Ph.D., Nirav Daphtary, M.S., Anne Dixon, M.D., Carolyn Morris, Ph.D., and Matthew Poynter, Ph.D.; Associate Professor of Anesthesiology William Tharp, M.D.; post-doctoral researcher Ravishankar Chandrasekaran, Ph.D.; and former pulmonology lab manager Isabella Butzirus, M.B.A.’25.

Jessica Cintolo-Gonzalez, M.D., associate professor of surgical oncology, has been named leader of the Sarcoma Transdisciplinary Team (TDT) at the University of Vermont Cancer Center. TDTs are treatment teams partnered with researchers and academic scholars, nurses, and others in cancer-specific groups of experts that meet regularly to formalize clinical research strategies, including clinical trial activities, based on local expertise and unmet needs for patients in our region.

Cintolo-Gonzalez’s primary research focus has been in melanoma. She also participates in national working groups seeking to improve and expand treatments for retroperitoneal and soft tissue sarcoma, and she is involved in the Breast Oncology Transdisciplinary Team and has served as the local PI for the COMET trial, which is shaping treatment of low-risk DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ, or cancer in the breasts’ milk ducts).

Thanks to the Hematology/Medical Oncology Fellowship program at the University of Vermont Cancer Center, a new team of physicians has arrived to provide greater capacity and perspectives toward cancer treatment and prevention:

• Duaa Kanan, M.D., completed a B.Sc. in microbiology with a double minor in chemistry and biological sciences at the University of Manitoba, Canada; an M.D. at Bahçeşehir University, Turkey; and an Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.
• Meredith Ryan, M.D., holds a B.A. in humanities from Trinity College, Ireland; a master’s degree in history from Oxford University, United Kingdom; and an M.D. from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Penn State Health.
• Sienna Searles, M.D.’21, B.S.’16., earned a B.S. in neuroscience at the University of Vermont and an M.D. at UVM’s Larner College of Medicine; she completed an Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Vermont Medical Center.