The University of Vermont and UVM Larner College of Medicine hosted the Dean’s Celebration of Excellence in Research September 23–27. The annual weeklong celebration was dedicated to showcasing and awarding the exceptional research endeavors of faculty, research fellows, and graduate students.
Distinguished Graduate Alumni Award
Jennifer Musa, Ph.D.’94, was granted the Distinguished Graduate Alumni Award at the Alumni Award Presentation and Lecture on September 24, in recognition of her achievements and contributions to the University of Vermont. This honor is awarded to alumni from the UVM Larner College of Medicine’s Ph.D. or M.S. programs who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in basic, clinical, or applied research; education; industry; public service; and/or humanitarianism; as well as outstanding commitment to the Larner College of Medicine community. As the recipient of this award, Musa shared highlights of her professional and academic journey in a thought-provoking lecture titled “The Science of Service,” which explored her collaborative effort with SUNY–Broome students to bring fresh drinking water, food security, and more to a rural community in Grande-Saline, Haiti.
On Thursday, September 26, an awards ceremony celebrated the outstanding dedication of Larner and UVM researchers to advancing medicine and science. While all nominees demonstrated significant commitment to their work, a select few were honored for their exceptional contributions.
Dean’s Celebration of Excellence in Research Award Winners
Category: Clinical Trials
Winner: Matthew Kinsey, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Professor of Medicine
Category: Mid-Career Investigator
Winner: Masha Ivanova, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Category: New Investigator
Winner: Elias Klemperer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Category: Research Mentor
Winner: Jason Stumpff, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Category: Research Laureate
Winner: Daniel Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine
Category: Clinical Research Coordinator
Winner: Rebecca Cole, Research Project Assistant, Department of Psychiatry
Category: Scientific Research Staff
Winner: Kirsten Tracy, Ph.D., Senior Lab/Research Technician, UVM Cancer Center
Category: UVMMC Junior Researcher of the Year
Winner: Leslie Young, M.D., Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Category: UVMMC Senior Researcher of the Year
Winner: Ira M. Bernstein M.D., Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences
Trainee Awards for Outstanding Research Publication
Winner: Brittney Palermo, M.D.’25, Medical Student, “Interleukin-6, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome in a biracial cohort: the reasons for geographic and racial differences in stroke cohort”
Winner: Mingu Kang, Ph.D., Graduate Student, “The focal adhesion protein Talin is a mechanically gated A-kinase anchoring protein”
Winner: Brandon Bensel, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Trainee, “Kinesin-1-transported liposomes prefer to go straight in 3D microtubule intersections by a mechanism shared by other molecular motors”
Winner: Colleen Kerrigan, M.D., Resident, “Transcatheter and surgical ductus arteriosus closure in very low birth weight infants: 2018–2022”
On September 10, the college recognized students, faculty, and medical residents as they were inducted into the Aequitas Health Honor Society, the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. These societies honor those in the Larner community who have demonstrated such core principles as professionalism, leadership, education, scholarship, and service.
Aequitas Health Honor Society
Larner Class of 2025 students Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips, Adaugo Chikezie, Hunter Myers, Karena Nguyen, Vennela Pandaraboyina, Neeki Parsa, Kae Ravichandran, Javier Rincon, Gabriela Sarriera Valentin, and Serra Sozen have been selected for induction into the Aequitas Health Honor Society, in recognition for “engaging in work rooted in improving health equity, anti-racism, and community engagement.”
The University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine chapter of Aequitas was formed in 2023 with the mission of identifying, recognizing, and developing future physician leaders to address the glaring health inequities that exist in our society today. Aequitas Fellows are committed to addressing health disparities in their communities and centering anti-racism in their efforts. Their peers have recognized them as individuals who have a deep understanding of social medicine and the structural causes of inequities, are very capable of learning with humility, and are excellent collaborators.
Aequitas Health Honor Society Fellows will have the opportunity to publish online research, thought pieces, commentaries, and other works through the online Aequitas Health Journal, and will doubtless become leaders in cultivating longitudinal partnerships between community organizations and the Larner College of Medicine to advance causes that address disparities in health in our communities.
Aequitas Fellows are nominated by their peers through an anonymous survey. Nominated individuals are invited to submit an application; applications are then blinded and scored by Aequitas Health Selection Committee Members. The top 10 highest-scoring applicants are then invited to interview for the final selection of Aequitas Health Fellows. Each Aequitas chapter recognizes no more than 10 percent of a graduating medical school class, as well as one to two faculty members and trainees.
Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society
Twenty-four members of the Larner Class of 2025 have been selected for induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AΩA) Honor Medical Society on the basis of their “demonstrated excellence in leadership, research, professionalism, service to the school and community, and clinical acumen”: Anupama Balasubramanian, Audree Sue Baroni, Shea Alexandra Bellino, Ty Edward Bever, Jacob Patrick Cappiello, Jamie Alexandra Cyr, Katelynn Michelle Giroux, Justin Paul Henningsen, Jharna Jahnavi, Elizabeth Parsons Kelley, Ryan Patrick Kelly, Kelly Jean Knight, Kadi Tra Mi Nguyen, Kenny Nguyen, Elizabeth Marie O’Neill, Brittney Jean Palermo, Madeline Yvette Powell, Anthony Quach, Ashwini Sarathy, Gabriela Fernanda Sarriera Valentin, Paige Song, Jennifer Marie Reslier Toner, Tyler V. VanDyk, and Hannah Catherine White.
Four faculty members—Justin DeAngelis, M.D., Katherine W. Dolbec, M.D., Andrew Hale, M.D., and Patrick Zimmerman, D.O.—and six residents—Robin Alsher, M.D., Akshee Batra, M.D., Gnendy Indig, M.D., Kristine McLaughlin, M.D., Shaidy Moronta, D.O., and Sienna Searles, M.D.—were also inducted into AΩA. AΩA is committed to national leadership in advancing diversity and inclusion in the profession of medicine based on evidence that inclusion of talented individuals from different backgrounds benefits patient care, population health, education, research, and scientific discovery. The primary criteria for fellowships, grants, and awards, based on AΩA’s core principles of professionalism, leadership, education, scholarship, and service, are distinction, excellence, and achievement.
Gold Humanism Honor Society
The following members of the Class of 2025 have been selected for induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS), recognized by their peers for their “demonstrated excellence in clinical care, leadership, compassion, and dedication to service”: Anupama Balasubramanian, Ty Bever, Jack Braidt, Max Breidenstein, Charlotte Evans, Michelle Falcone, Callan Gravel-Pucillo, Justin Henningsen, Ana Homick, Elizabeth Kelley, Heather Kettlewell, Casey Krueger, Tyler McGuire, Karena Nguyen, Neeki Parsa, Javier Rincon, Faith Robinson, Ashwini Sarathy, Paige Song, and Jared Stone.
The Larner College of Medicine established a chapter of the Gold Humanism Honor Society in 2005. The purpose of the GHHS is to recognize those students who have demonstrated outstanding personal/interpersonal characteristics in their interactions with fellow students, teachers, staff, and/or patients and their families. The selection of students for this honor is determined by students within the class using a peer evaluation survey and by members of Larner faculty and staff.
In addition to the class GHHS members, one student and one faculty member were nominated by the students, faculty, and staff and selected as the recipients of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. This year’s recipients, announced at the Class of 2024 Honors Night in May, are student Nathaniel “Than” Peterson Moore, M.D.’24, emergency medicine resident at University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vermont; and faculty member Heather A. Bradeen, M.D., associate professor of oncology and division chief of the pediatric hematology/oncology department at the University of Vermont Health Network.
Investigators at the Larner College of Medicine will continue their 23-year program studying stroke and cognitive disorders in the United States, thanks to a $10.1 million multi-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) renewing a REGARDS (REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke) study grant. The purpose of the REGARDS project is to understand why people in some parts of the country develop more strokes than people in other parts of the country, and why blacks develop more strokes than whites.
The study followed 30,239 Black and White adults over the age of 45 from the lower 48 states. The findings have been significant, resulting in over 750 academic papers based on REGARDS data. One striking discovery revealed that Black people under age 75 are more than twice as likely to die from stroke than white people. Another key finding showed that people living in the South had a 40 percent higher risk of stroke-related death compared to those in other parts of the U.S. It also noted that Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD) occur more frequently in Black Americans. While REGARDS investigators have uncovered a litany of reasons for these differences, unfortunately, trends in adverse health in Black Americans seem to be worsening over time.
Due to the remarkable success of this study, the NIH has renewed its grant, allocating $16.4 million in the next two years, and $37.1 million over the next five years, to support this multi-institutional project. Of this, UVM will receive $4.3 million in the initial two years, and over $10 million by the end of the fifth year. This next step will focus on investigating factors contributing to worsening health disparities among Black Americans, the rise in stroke mortality since 2014, and effects of these trends on dementia and brain health.
“It is alarming that our population’s health is worsening, and that Black Americans continue to have poorer health outcomes than others,” said Mary Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., University Distinguished Professor at UVM and co-leader of the REGARDS collaboration. “This new research will help provide answers to narrow the gap. Here at the UVM Larner College of Medicine, REGARDS has been an engine for our faculty and students conducting research in these areas for over 20 years, and I am excited that we will be able to continue this, and improve the health of our country.”
REGARDS plans to recruit a new group of 12,000 Black and white adults between the ages of 45 and 64, and will continue to follow 8,000 original participants of the study. The study will compare people born in 1908–1960 and enrolled in middle age in 2003–2007 with people born in 1961–1980 and enrolled in middle age now. This will allow researchers to understand how the uptick in obesity and risk factors have impacted brain health, specifically related to stroke and dementia. The team will also address increasing health disparities affecting Black Americans.
The study’s infrastructure has supported the research careers of Larner faculty like Neil Zakai, M.D., Tim Plante, M.D., and others. More than 35 trainees, including post-doctoral fellows, graduate students, residents, and medical students, have also benefited from the mentorship and research opportunities provided through UVM’s involvement with the REGARDS study.
Cushman also highlighted that REGARDS currently supports 133 active ancillary studies, funded outside of the primary study grant. These include grants awarded to Larner faculty members, such as Nels Olson, Ph.D., and Debora Kamin Mukaz, Ph.D. To date, UVM faculty working in REGARDS have secured over $33 million in funding for the university—not including the current award.
The REGARDS study would not be possible without the work of key staff members at the Larner College of Medicine, including Elaine Cornell, Rebekah Boyle, Jill Sanders, and Nicole Gagne.
A team of scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative, including Davi Bock, Ph.D., associate professor of neurological sciences, recently made a substantial advancement in neurobiological research by successfully mapping the entire brain of Drosophila melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly. The study, titled “Whole-brain annotation and multi-connectome cell typing of Drosophila,” recently published in Nature, established a “consensus cell type atlas”—a comprehensive guide—for understanding the different types of cells in the fruit fly brain.
While similar studies have been done with simpler organisms, such as the nematode worm C. elegans and the larval stage of the fruit fly, the adult fruit fly offers more intricate behaviors to study. Though the fruit fly’s brain is clearly less complex than that of a human, or even a mouse, the implications of the study are profound. There are tremendous commonalities in how neural circuits in all species process information; this work allows principles of information processing to be identified in a simpler model organism and then sought in larger brains. Bock notes that scientists are currently incapable of scaling up this approach to a human brain, but states that this achievement represents a noteworthy step toward complete connectome of a mouse brain.
“This type of work [being done across this field of connectomics] advances the state of the art in a once-in-a-century fashion, allowing us to both map the shapes and connections of every individual neuron in the complete brain of a fairly sophisticated animal, the adult fruit fly, and to annotate and mine the resulting connectome with cutting-edge software analytics. Neither light microscopy—even with multi-color fluorescence—nor the classical Golgi method and its allied approaches has provided this capability,” said Bock. “To achieve this feat at the scale of the entire brain of an important genetic model organism such as the fruit fly represents a remarkable advancement in the field.”
This study leverages tools and data generated by the FlyWire Consortium, which includes study leads such as UVM’s Bock; Gregory Jefferis, Ph.D., and Philipp Schlegel, Ph.D., from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and University of Cambridge; and Sebastian Seung, Ph.D. and Mala Murthy, Ph.D., of Princeton University. The consortium used electron microscopic brain images generated previously in Bock’s lab to create a detailed map of connections between neurons in the entire adult brain of a female fruit fly. This map includes around 50 million chemical synapses between the fly’s aforementioned 139,255 neurons. Researchers also added information about different types of cells, nerves, developmental lineages, and predictions about the neurotransmitters used by neurons. FlyWire’s Connectome Data Explorer open-access data analysis tool is accessible and available for download, and can be browsed interactively—all done in the spirit of encouraging team science. This work is detailed in an accompanying Nature paper, “Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain.”
The Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) and Executive Leadership in Health Care (ELH) programs held their fall session in Philadelphia September 9–15. Among the attendees were Larner College of Medicine faculty members Rebecca Aslakson, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of anesthesiology; Kristen Pierce, M.D., professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist; and Danielle Ehret, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of pediatrics and neonatologist at UVM Children’s Hospital. Aslakson and Pierce are fellows in the 2024–25 ELAM program, while Ehret is part of the 2024–25 ELH cohort.
These yearlong programs provide leadership training, coaching, and networking for women in medicine, public health, and academia. ELAM targets senior women faculty, while ELH focuses on rising leaders, preparing them for executive roles in the next five years.
As part of the ELAM training, fellows worked in small groups to develop turnaround strategies for a fictional health care system, Anne Preston Health Services. Pierce’s group proposed the “Stronger Together” plan, which included acquiring a local hospital, implementing a strategic planning group for change management, and executing a phased approach to institutional reforms over two years. At the session, fellows presented their plans, which included financial assessments, to a mock board of directors.
Medical student Lexi Amaio ʼ27 recently attended the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicologists Conference in Denver, where she connected with toxicologists, pharmacists, SPIs, and researchers from around the world to present her work, titled “Retrospective review of expanding water bead ingestions in pediatric patients.” Amaio, who worked on this project with her mentors Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine Christian Pulcini, M.D., M.P.H., and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine Joseph Kennedy, M.D., was honored with the prestigious Gary S. Wasserman Memorial Pediatric Abstract Award for her research.
Iris Toedt-Pingel, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics and a critical care pediatrician, participated in Dancing with the Burlington Stars at the Flynn Center on September 14. This annual event raises funds for the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Toedt-Pingel danced as a star with instructor and UVM alumna Sophie Decker, who teaches at Dance in the Isle. The pair won the Fan Favorite Award for most successful fundraising. Toedt-Pingel says she cherished the opportunity to step out of her comfort zone and try something “absolutely different” from what she does in her professional life, while raising awareness and funds for a good cause and an amazing organization. “It was such a great experience and a very fun night at the Flynn,” she said.