Experts in burn surgery, neonatology, otorhinolaryngology, cardiothoracic surgery and radiology were recognized with 2015 Distinguished Achievement Awards during the University of Vermont College of Medicine Medical Reunion weekend, which took place June 12 to 14.
Established by the College’s Medical Alumni Association in 1985, the award recognizes outstanding scientific or academic achievement.
Honorees include the following alumni:
Palmer Q. Bessey, M.D.’75, has spent his career trying to improve outcomes for serious burn victims, both in terms of survival and quality of life. He completed residency training in surgery and surgical critical care at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), followed by a research fellowship in surgical metabolism and nutrition at Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He then joined served on the faculty, specializing in trauma, burns and critical care at institutions including UAB, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Rochester. In 2000, Bessey became the Aronson Family Foundation Professor of Burn Surgery and associate director of the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. He has since earned a master’s degree in epidemiology from Columbia University and has served on several surgical organization boards, including, most recently, as president of the American Burn Association.
George A. Little, M.D.’65, co- founded the neonatal intensive care unit and the Vermont/New Hampshire regional perinatal education program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Geisel School of Medicine in Hanover, N.H., with Jerold Lucey, M.D., UVM professor of pediatrics emeritus. Little’s career began with a pediatrics internship at the University of Oregon, then service as a Peace Corps Physician in Africa, followed by a pediatrics residency at what is now the UVM Medical Center and a neonatology fellowship at the University of Colorado. For more than a decade, he was professor and chairman of the former Department of Maternal and Child Health at Dartmouth – now the Departments of Pediatrics and Obstetrics/Gynecology. His long-term interests include perinatal health policy, regionalization, outcomes, and family- centered care, especially in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, clinical decision-making and ethics. Little is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as well as Alpha Omega Alpha. He has been both a member and leader for a number of organizations in the professional, public, private and government sectors. His early interest in global health began during his tenure as a UVM medical student, when he spent two summers in Tanzania and was co-chair of the Global Implementation Task Force for Helping Babies Breathe, a neonatal resuscitation program for resource poor areas that is being disseminated globally. Little currently remains active at Dartmouth and with initiatives in Malawi, Nigeria and Kosovo.
Richard V. Smith, M.D.’90, has immersed himself in researching cancers of the head and neck as part of his role as professor of clinical otorhinolaryngology and head-and-neck surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Focused on the role of genetic and biological factors in patients’ prognoses, he strives to determine optimal treatments that offer both the best chance of cure and the fewest side effects. Through his clinical investigation, Smith has developed new techniques in trans-oral surgery, a less-invasive procedure that allows the surgeon to gain access to the critical areas of the head and neck through the mouth – all with concern for improving quality of life. Smith has served as president of the New York Head and Neck Society and the New York Laryngological Society.
Norman J. Snow, M.D.’70, has shaped the study of cardiothoracic surgery at academic institutions from the Midwest to New England. Now retired from surgery and a professor of anatomy at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College, he has written more than 70 peer-reviewed publications, contributed eight book chapters and given more than 120 presentations. Snow has held academic appointments in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Louisville, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Illinois, and, most recently, as adjunct professor of surgery at UVM, in addition to his current role at Dartmouth. Snow has an interest in emergency medical services and chaired the trauma and emergency care committee of the Cleveland Academy of Medicine, as well as served as the first medical director of Metro Life Flight, which then was the second-largest helicopter EMS program in the country.
Daniel C. Sullivan, M.D.’70, is a leading radiologist with expertise in nuclear medicine and oncologic imaging. A professor and vice chair for research in the department of radiology at University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., he also serves as co-director of both the Radiation Oncology and Imaging Program for the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Imaging Program in the Duke Clinical Research Institute. Sullivan has held faculty appointments at Duke University, as well as at Yale University and University of Pennsylvania medical centers. From 1997 to 2007, he was associate director in the division of cancer treatment and diagnosis and head of the cancer imaging program at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Working to advance the field of quantitative imaging, Sullivan founded and chairs the Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance of the Radiological Society of North America, for which he serves as science advisor. In 2009, Sullivan received the Gold Medal Award from the Association of University Radiologists.
