Across the Spectrum

Recognitions & honors

Susan G. Kornstein, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, VCU School of Medicine

Executive director, VCU Institute for Women’s Health
Executive director, VCU Mood Disorders Institute

Kornstein, professor of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology at the VCU School of Medicine, has been named president of the International Association for Women’s Mental Health. Kornstein was inaugurated as president at the Third International Congress on Women’s Mental Health, held in March in Melbourne, Australia. Kornstein will serve in her new position for three years.

Kornstein recently served as vice president of the International Association of Women’s Mental Health and a keynote speaker for the congress. She received approximately 700 scientific abstracts from mental health researchers in 60 countries around the world.

The International Congress on Women’s Mental Health is sponsored by the International Association for Women’s Mental Health, along with many supporting organizations, including the World Psychiatric Association, the World Federation of Mental Health, the World Health Organization, the International Menopause Society and the International Marce Society. The congress convenes every three years and focuses on issues in women’s mental health from a variety of biological, psychosocial and global perspectives.

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Kenneth Kendler, M.D., Departments of Human and Molecular Genetics and Psychiatry, VCU School of Medicine

Kendler, professor of human genetics and psychiatry at VCU, and director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, received a five-year grant extension totaling nearly $2.5 million from The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to understand the genetic basis of the vulnerability to alcohol dependence.

Since the early 1980s, Kendler has studied the genetics of psychiatric and substance use disorders including schizophrenia, major depression, alcoholism, and smoking and nicotine dependence. His work on the molecular level focuses on identifying the location of the specific genes that influence vulnerability to schizophrenia, alcoholism and nicotine dependence.

According to Kendler, alcohol dependence is a major public health problem and previous research findings suggest that genetic factors may play a critical role in the cause of such dependence. Through this research, Kendler's team plans to identify specific loci, or position on the gene, which impacts on the risk for alcohol dependence.

The work builds on the team’s findings of a molecular genetic study from the first two funding periods. Kendler and his colleagues examined alcohol dependence in sibling pairs studied in Ireland with the goal of detecting the genomic location of susceptibility loci for alcoholism.

In this new funding period, their plans involve working with collaborators in Northern Ireland to collect at least 2,000 individuals with alcohol dependence. The team will apply advanced mapping and bioinformatics methods to further clarify specific genes that influence risk for alcohol problems in humans.

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Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Gov. Timothy Kaine has named Spiegel, an internationally renowned researcher and professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the VCU School of Medicine, as one of Virginia’s Outstanding Scientists of 2008 for her discovery of a potent lipid mediator, which she demonstrated to have important roles in cancer, inflammation and allergy.

Spiegel’s contributions to this research have opened new avenues for drug development to fight these diseases.

She was recognized for her pioneering work on a new lipid mediator that regulates vital physiological processes important for health and diseases. She developed the concept that sphingolipid metabolites serve as signaling molecules, and the one that she discovered in the early 1990s, sphingosine-1-phosphate, is now the most thoroughly characterized and widely accepted mediator in this field.

Spiegel, who is also the program co-leader of the Cancer Cell Biology Program at the VCU Massey Cancer Center, and recipient of the Mann T. and Sara D. Lowry Professorship in Oncology, has received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health to continuously fund her research for nearly 20 years. In 2003, she was awarded a National Institutes of Health MERIT award totaling nearly $2.1 million to continue her research on S1P. The award is given to investigators who have demonstrated superior competence and productivity.

Spiegel’s seminal report, published in a 1993 issue of the journal Nature, linking S1P to growth factor action has been followed by a steady stream of contributions important to the field of lipid mediators. In a 1996 paper, also published in Nature, Spiegel introduced the provocative notion that the dynamic balance between S1P and its precursors functions as a cellular rheostat that determines whether a cell survives or dies. This concept has since been demonstrated by other investigators and has important implications for chemotherapy and radiation therapy of cancer.

Read more about her research.

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Raj Rao, Ph.D., VCU School of Engineering

Rao, assistant professor of chemical and life science engineering, has received a National Science Foundation Career Award, one of the foundation’s most prestigious awards, to engineer systems to propagate stable human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory setting and to educate students and the general public about the latest advances in stem cell research.

Previous work conducted by Rao and colleagues demonstrated that human embryonic stem cells are prone to genomic instability based on their propagation conditions. The award will fund research that aims to ascertain molecular mechanisms that cause these changes and develop propagation systems that aim to be efficient, while generating high quantities of stable human embryonic stem cell lines.

The award will also enable Rao to develop educational and laboratory modules for high school and undergraduate students and the general public. These modules will increase awareness of engineering, molecular genetics and cellular biology skills. He will work with high school teachers, public educators at museums and faculty at undergraduate universities to disseminate the information.

Through this project, the goal is to communicate and engage students and the general public about the far-reaching potential of research in this field.

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Shiv Khanna, Ph.D., Department of Physics, VCU Life Sciences

Khanna, professor of physics, and colleagues from VCU and Penn State, were recently highlighted in the Editor’s Choice section of the journal Science, as well as the trade publication Chemical and Engineering News, for the group’s work on the synthesis of an unusual inorganic ring molecule made of arsenic and tellurium, As2Te2-2, found to have magnetic and aromatic characteristics.

The findings suggest that traditionally nonmagnetic elements can become magnetic. For physicists, this work extends the understanding of aromaticity and shows that it may occur in unexpected materials.

Magnetic materials are used in a variety of applications including magnetic stickers, motors, credit cards, refrigerators, magnetic memory storage and sensors.

“In this particular case, the interesting aspect is that both of the elements are traditionally semi-conducting elements that are nonmagnetic. We also expect the solid to be semi-conducting, which is quite exciting because of the recent interest in semi-conducting magnets for quantum computing and spintronics,” said Khanna.

According to Khanna, aromaticity and magnetism are generally thought to be mutually exclusive; aromatic molecules are unusually stable and nonmagnetic. The new molecule, As2Te2-2, is ferromagnetic, suggesting a source of magnetism that is new and unknown. This also shows that assembling materials with nonmagnetic components may result in magnetic assemblies, suggesting that cluster-assembled materials may have unusual properties.

In the mid-19th century, the term aromaticity was used to describe organic substances that had a pleasant smell, Khanna said. It was later used as a marker for unusual stability of organic molecules and is linked to the delocalized rings of charge that form above and below the stable molecular rings and sometimes within the molecule itself.

Khanna said that the aromatic molecule synthesized by the team is unusually electron-rich. When one electron partially disrupts each ring, this leads to a magnetic moment — a distortion toward a parallelogram structure and an only partial disruption of the charged rings.

These findings were published in the January 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Khanna collaborated with VCU researchers Arthur C. Reber and Meichun Qian and Penn State researchers Angel Ugrinov and Ayusman Sen.

Additionally, Khanna has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Khanna was selected by his peers in the field of physics for his “pioneering contributions to theoretical understanding of electronic and magnetic properties of clusters as well as work on superatoms forming a new dimension to the periodic table.”

In previous research findings, Khanna, together with Penn State colleagues, had demonstrated that aluminum clusters can act as halogen or alkaline earth elements, thus allowing for the creation of new families of nanoscale materials with extraordinary attributes.

According to Khanna, the production and stabilization of such species is a stirring development as it opens a new branch of chemistry and material science, showing that these superatoms can be used as building blocks to form new nanoscale materials that could lead to new applications in medicine, catalysis, sensors and other fields.

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Patrick Dattalo, M.S.W., School of Social Work

Dattalo, associate professor in the School of Social Work, has written a book about sample-size determination in research. “Determining Sample Size — Balancing Power, Precision, and Practicality” provides a current and comprehensive overview of sample-size determination. The book describes and critiques all sample-size determination strategies for social work research, uses worked examples throughout and in a separate chapter to demonstrate applications of concepts and strategies, and identifies Web-based resources, such as free software and scripts. “Determining Sample Size — Balancing Power, Precision, and Practicality” was released in January 2008 by Oxford University Press.

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Hani M. El-Kaderi, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry

El-Kaderi, assistant professor of chemistry, has been named among the recipients of the 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science Newcomb Cleveland Prize. The award recognizes El-Kaderi’s contributions to a research paper published in the April 2007 issue of the journal Science. The findings of that work help move scientists another step closer to new materials with a high surface area for hydrogen fuel storage.

The study focused on the synthesis and characterization of three-dimensional, covalent organic frameworks, crystalline nanoporous polymers made from light elements such as hydrogen, boron, carbon and oxygen. These polymers have high thermal stability, high surface areas and extremely low densities. The research team was the first to crystallize these organic polymers, especially COF-108, a member of this new class of materials with the lowest reported density of any crystalline material.
 
The synthesis and characterization of COFs, particularly COFs with high surface areas such as COF-108, have automobile and energy-related applications. Researchers are trying to reveal ways to use high surface areas of organic structures as a means of hydrogen storage.
 
El-Kaderi conducted the research while he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles in conjunction with the departments of chemistry and biochemistry and with the California NanoSystems Institute. At VCU, El-Kaderi is continuing his research to develop new classes of covalent organic frameworks as a means of hydrogen and methane storage. The study at UCLA was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and BASF, a global chemical company based in Germany.

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Richard Wenzel, M.D., Department of Internal Medicine, VCU School of Medicine

Wenzel, chair of internal medicine, and president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, is the principal investigator of a new project grant to support female health care workers from Africa, Asia and the Asian subcontinent.

Wenzel, an internationally recognized expert in infectious diseases, has helped implement a professional development program for these women to provide an opportunity for networking with leaders and experts of ISID, gathering information and applying the new knowledge to improve the standard of care for women with infectious diseases in their home countries.

Through the grant to ISID, approximately 70 women with careers in medicine, nursing, public health and infectious diseases will be selected to attend the 13th International Congress on Infectious Diseases, which will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, June 19-22, 2008.

In many developing nations, there is a critical need to boost the global shortage of physicians and improve patient care, especially for women suffering from various infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria and others.

According to Wenzel, there will be a six-month, post-meeting follow-up to identify what progress and changes the women have been able to make in their home nations.

Approximately 3,000 infectious disease experts from more than 100 countries will attend the 13th International Congress on Infectious Diseases to share the latest scientific findings and emerging trends in the field.

The work is supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the ISID.

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Joseph Ornato, M.D., Department of Emergency Medicine, VCU School of Medicine

The American Heart Association has selected Ornato, professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, as recipient of the 2007 Resuscitation Science Symposium Lifetime Achievement Award for Cardiac Resuscitation Science.

The annual award recognizes pioneers in the field of cardiac resuscitation science for their outstanding contributions to the field.

Ornato chaired the steering committee for a National Institutes of Health-sponsored public access defibrillation clinical trial, which found that trained laypersons could use automated external defibrillators in public places safely and that such use could double the odds that a cardiac arrest victim will survive.

He specializes in cardiology, resuscitation, emergency management and preparedness, and disaster response and is the director of the city of Richmond's Emergency Management Service department.

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James R. Vonesh, Ph.D., Department of Biology, VCU Life Sciences

Vonesh, an assistant professor of biology at VCU, and Karen Warkentin, at Boston University, have received more than $650,000 in grant funding from the National Science Foundation to examine the effects of sequential predators on different life history stages of the red-eyed treefrog, including arboreal eggs, aquatic tadpoles and arboreal froglets.

Predation is one the key factors thought to shape patterns of biodiversity. Because prey are typically vulnerable to more than one predator, a key challenge in ecology is understanding the combined effects of predators on shared prey. Previous studies focusing on predators of a common life stage — for example, two tadpole predators – have shown this can be difficult because of context dependency of species’ interactions.

According to Vonesh, this three-year project will help elucidate how the lethal (i.e., consumptive) and non-lethal (i.e., shifts in behavior, morphology and life history) effects of multiple predators combine across life stages to shape prey survival and the timing of critical life history switch points, such as metamorphosis.

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Halim Choueiry, VCU School of the Arts in Qatar

Choueiry, assistant professor of graphic design, received a Qatar National Research Fund grant totaling $10,000 to find a new approach to creative type design for the Arabic writing style and system.

While most printed materials use digital technology with computerized typefaces known as fonts, Arabic writing has a long tradition of beautiful, flowing calligraphy not easily captured by typefaces. Additionally, Arabic-style writing is not easily reproduced in the context of digital technology.

Choueiry, together with student Noor Mohammed A. Ali, is conducting a research project titled “Al-khatt and Al-kitabah: Arabic Writing at the Mercy of Technology.” They plan to identify possible solutions for the application and usage of the rules of the connectivity of Arabic letters in respect of the organic and calligraphic manner, as opposed to the rigidity imposed by computerized typefaces.

According to Choueiry, digital technology was designed for Latin type and does not accommodate for the way Arabic is naturally written. As a result, the writing system of the Arab world has been altered to fit a technology that does not accommodate it.

In other work, Choueiry is exploring the complex visual and cultural patterning processes that have emerged in the cultural landscape of the Middle East.

The research will focus on issues of cultural navigation and mapping within the cultures of the Middle East. Choueiry hopes to establish an advanced understanding of how official and unofficial signs in the urban visual landscape create conceptual patterns in the minds of individuals, thus helping them to navigate the environment, make sense of it and reflect on both personal and cultural identities. It will use the emerging cultural landscapes of Qatar as its testing ground.

In both Qatar and other regions of the Middle East, such as Lebanon, the official system of signs imported from Western Europe exists alongside local vernaculars and unofficial visual signs. According to Choueiry, Doha, the capital of Qatar, is easily distinguishable from the multicultural urban landscape of Beirut. Beirut is considered to be a cosmopolitan, chaotic, urban environment; however, Qatar is uniformly flat with few perceivable barriers to finding one’s way around.

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