UC Davis Health System
DISTINCTION continued from page 4
of the Department of Dermatology, said
that galectin-12 appears to trigger fat cells
to conserve rather than burn energy. He
suspects that interruption of that signal
may enable improvement in fat metabolism
and reduction in insulin resistance in
patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Faculty honors
The American Society of Cytopathology
has inducted Lydia Pleotis Howell
president for a yearlong term that began
on Nov. 6. Howell is a professor and chair
of the UC Davis Department of Pathology
and Laboratory Medicine. She will lead
development of a five-year strategic plan
Distinctions
for the society. Previous ASC presidents
Pioneering surgical procedure: UC Davis
include Pap test inventor George
otolaryngologist Peter Belafsky appeared
Papanicolaou.
Nov. 2 on the nationally televised medical
The American College of Emergency
Physicians (ACEP) presented its 2011
Outstanding Contribution in Research
Award to Nathan Kuppermann, professor
of emergency medicine and pediatrics,
and chair of the UC Davis Department of
Emergency Medicine. Kuppermann was
elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2010
and has received numerous other research
awards, including the Pediatric Emergency
Medicine and Critical Care Research Award
from the American Academy of Pediatrics
Otolaryngologist Peter Belafsky and his patient
Section on Emergency Medicine.
Brenda Charett Jensen on the set of The Doctors
television program.
talk show The Doctors with his patient
Brenda Charett Jensen, whose larynx was
transplanted in a historic procedure at UC
Davis Medical Center. Belafsky was among
the team of surgeons who in October 2010
performed the complex 18-hour surgery,
which is considered only the second
documented transplant of its kind in the
world. The transplant restored her ability
to speak, which surgery in 1999 had
impaired.
Primacy in psychiatric residency
recruitment: The percentage of students
graduating from the UC Davis School
of Medicine who chose residencies in
psychiatry during the past six years was
greater than that of any other medical
school in the United States. An analysis
of 127 medical schools from data that the
American Association of Medical Colleges
(AAMC) compiled shows that 11 percent
of UC Davis medical students selected a
psychiatry residency between 2004 and
2010, compared to a nationwide medical
school average of 4.5 percent.
Nathan Kuppermann
The prestigious Institute of Medicine
(IOM) has conferred membership on
Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for human
health sciences and dean of the UC Davis
School of Medicine, and internationally
renowned fetal and neonatal surgeon Diana
L. Farmer, who was appointed chair of
the UC Davis Department of Surgery in
October. Election to the IOM is among
the nation’s highest honors in health and
medicine. Conrad and Pomeroy join
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
Faculty Development Office
2921 Stockton Blvd., Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95817
nine other current and emeritus UC
Davis faculty as members of IOM, an
independent, nonprofit branch of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Developments
Published by the Faculty Development Office
Partnership to create research and
manufacturing hub: UC Davis Health
System, PETNET Solutions Inc. (a
subsidiary of Siemens Medical Solutions
USA Inc.) and Northern California PET
Imaging Center plan to jointly establish
a 12,000-square-foot facility on the
university’s Sacramento campus for
research and training in radiochemistry
and for commercial production of
radiopharmaceutical products used
in positron emission tomography
(PET) scans. The project will include
installation of two medical cyclotrons
for production of PET radioisotopes.
Julie Sutcliffe, associate professor in the
departments of biomedical engineering
and hematology and oncology at UC
Davis, will oversee the new research and
training program.
National neuroscience clinical
trials site designation: The National
Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke (NINDS) has selected UC Davis
Health System as one of 25 clinical sites
nationwide – among only four on the
West Coast – in its new NeuroNEXT
Network for Excellence in Neuroscience
Clinical Trials. The network will support
clinical trials during the next seven years
for neurological disorders, including
brain injury, multiple sclerosis, stroke,
dementias, neuromuscular diseases,
movement disorders and autism. Craig
McDonald, professor and chair of
the UC Davis Department of Physical
Medicine and Rehabilitation, is principal
investigator for the project.
WINTER 2011–2012
Workshops and other activities
You are invited! We encourage you to
enroll in one of the various workshops,
programs and events sponsored by the
Faculty Development Office. For more
event details and to register, visit www.
ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev/ and
click Enroll Online. (Event co-sponsors
are indicated within parentheses.)
Volunteer Clinical Faculty members are
also welcome and encouraged to attend
faculty development events.
(calendar from page 1)
7 Workshop: Putting Together Your Academic Packet
10 Scientific Writing for Publication (JCLP)
14 Workshop: How to Give Effective Feedback
December
17 A Leadership Model for Faculty in Academic Medicine (MCLP)
facultyNewsletter
Published by the Faculty Development
Office, which administers and coordinates
programs that respond to the professional and
career development needs of UC Davis Health
System faculty members.
2921 Stockton Blvd., Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95817
(916) 703-9230
www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
Edward Callahan, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Personnel
Acting Director, Faculty Development
“Reviewing these accomplishments
helps us grasp how far we’ve come as
a community,” said Callahan, who is a
professor of family and community medicine. “We can now turn to completing
our proposed strategic plan, recognizing
our potential for further growth.”
25 Leading Complex Organizations (JCLP, MCLP)
1 Application Deadline: Dean’s
Excellence Awards
March
9 What works: An Alternative Strategy
to Power, Politics & Personality
in the Workplace (JCLP)
8 Dean’s Recognition Reception
13 Breakfast With the Vice Chancellor/
Dean
9 Leadership and Management Skills: Using the Meyers-Briggs Personality Type
Indicator to Your Advantage (JCLP)
16 Budget Management and Business
Reports (MCLP)
15 Workshop: Faculty Merits, Promotions and Tenure
16 The Leadership Circle Profile 360 Orientation (MCLP)
January
22 Workshop: Diagnosing Learners in Clinical Teaching
13 Negotiation Skills (JCLP)
29 Workshop: HSCP Faculty Promotions Process
Cheryl Busman
Program Representative, Faculty Development
cheryl.busman@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Event co-sponsors
EditPros LLC
Writing and Editing
www.editpros.com
MCLP: Mid-Career Leadership Program
20 Relationship Between Medical Staff
and Clinical Enterprise (MCLP)
February
JCLP: Junior Career Leadership Program
2 Breakfast with the Vice Chancellor/
Dean
FEBRUARY continued on page 6
5
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
6
aura of distinction
Incremental honors enhance eminence of UC Davis Health System
The progressive rise in the international
prominence and prestige of UC Davis
Health System is the deserving result
of the collective intelligence, insights,
and scientific and clinical achievements
of thousands of dedicated medical
professionals. From a distance, the
evolution has appeared seamless. Under
greater magnification, it is the aggregate
of a succession of advancements
and honors, motivated by a cohesive
administrative team and strategic plan.
“Members of the UC Davis Health
Community accomplish remarkable
feats on a daily basis,” observes Edward
J. Callahan, associate dean for academic
personnel. “These accomplishments
validate the goal-setting and strategies
that we developed in our earlier
strategic planning. As we finish the
creation of our current strategic plan we
pause here to let the impact of some of
these recent accomplishments settle in,
and to appreciate the level at which we
operate as a scholarly and care-giving
community.”
Selected news announcements
that the Health System’s Public Affairs
Office released during a typical fiveweek period that began this past Oct. 1
exemplify the discoveries, distinctions,
honors and developments that
contribute substantively to the prestige
of UC Davis Health System.
researchers has discovered that
recombination, a DNA repair process,
has a self-correcting mechanism. That
finding may offer clues about ways
in which cancer cells can become
resistant to DNA damage-inducing
treatments. Wolf-Dietrich Heyer,
a professor of microbiology and of
molecular and cellular biology, and
co-leader of Molecular Oncology at UC
Davis Cancer Center, says that greater
understanding of the fundamental
mechanisms of DNA repair systems will
enable new approaches to overcome
treatment resistance.
Study links genetic variant
and autoantibodies to autism:
Researchers at UC Davis have
found that pregnant women with a
particular gene variation are more
likely than other mothers to produce
autoantibodies to the brains of
their developing fetuses, increasing
risk that the children may develop
continued on page 4
Discoveries
New insights about the complexities
of DNA repair: An international
team of scientists led by UC Davis
A student researcher (left) works with Judy
Van de Water (right).
facultyrounds
A welcome to new
faculty colleagues
VCF AWARDEE TUAN DOAN: ‘Medicine is a
calling in vietnamese society’
Family medicine physician Tuan Doan, a
UC Davis Health System volunteer clinical
faculty (VCF) member, says that teaching
has taught him much about himself and
the field of medicine.
“In my view, teaching involves selflearning as well. By teaching, I have
learned a lot about what I don’t know, and
my students have kept me honest about
my own self-education via their thoughtful
questions,” said Doan, lead physician at
Sutter Medical Group’s Rocklin Family
Medicine clinic.
This past March, UC Davis Health
System honored Doan with a Volunteer
Clinical Faculty Award. Kay Nelsen,
associate professor of family and
community medicine, commended
Doan in the Department of Family and
Community Medicine’s nomination
submission.
“His commitment to teaching
exemplifies the best of the collaboration
of academic medicine and community
practices,” Nelsen wrote. “He has served as
a role model for our medical students and
has been an outstanding representative of
our specialty.”
Doan, who has been a VCF member
with the UC Davis Department of Family
and Community Medicine since 1998,
serves as a preceptor in a primary-care
clerkship for third-year medical students.
He also has been a preceptor for UC Davis
first-year medical students in Doctoring
1 and for students in the Family Nurse
Practitioner and Physician Assistant
Program. He additionally is a preceptor
for University of Phoenix and Stanford
University physician assistant and nurse
practitioner students.
“I enjoy passing knowledge, which I
have accumulated during my education
process, to the next generation of
practicing physicians and future physician
leaders in our society,” Doan explained.
Doan carries a caseload of nearly 7,000
patients and oversees two colleagues, two
nurse practitioners and two physician
assistants in his clinic, the clientele of
which ranges from newborns to geriatric
patients.
“My greatest strength in clinical
medicine is convincing my patients to buy
into preventive healthcare by practicing
healthful daily activities. I encourage
them to stop smoking and to exercise,
control their weight, relax, and get
appropriate immunizations. In the long
run, prevention will cost society less than
treatment of illness,” Doan said.
He first became interested in medicine
as a youngster in his native Vietnam, from
which he and his family members fled as
refugees in 1975 when North Vietnamese
forces captured Saigon (Ho Chi Minh
City).
“Most of my relatives on my mother’s
side of my family are physicians or in
health-related professions. Medicine is
a calling in the Vietnamese society, to
alleviate the pain and suffering of our
fellow human beings,” Doan explained.
Speaking only Vietnamese and
French, Doan settled at 14 years of age
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
with his family in Florida and quickly
acclimated to his new surroundings. He
supported himself as a custodian at a
McDonald’s restaurant to help pay for his
undergraduate education. After obtaining
dual bachelor’s degrees in chemistry
and health sciences at the University of
Florida, Gainesville, he enrolled at The
Ohio State University. There he obtained
a graduate degree in physiology and then
his MD degree in 1991.
Doan qualified for a U.S. Air
Force scholarship by enlisting as a
commissioned second lieutenant. He
served a three-year residency in family
medicine at David Grant Medical Center
at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, in
a program affiliated with UC Davis. He
completed his residency as a captain
and was dispatched as a member of the
425th Air Base Squadron to Izmir, Turkey.
There he was assigned as a staff family
physician and liaison officer in charge of
the radiology department, overseeing the
Turkish radiologists with whom the base
contracted to read X-rays.
With a promotion to the rank of
major, he was transferred in 1996 to
McClellan Air Force base in North
Highlands as a senior staff family
physician. While there, he learned the
UC Davis physician assistant education
program needed a preceptor for students.
Doan volunteered, beginning his 13year association as a VCF member. Upon
Doan’s military discharge in 1998, he was
recruited to join the Sutter Medical Group
staff.
In his work with students, Doan seeks
to impart more than medical knowledge.
“Hopefully, through my teaching and
precepting, my students will develop
a sense of compassion for the patients
under their care, and develop better
communication skills and rapport with
the patient,” Doan said.
viewpoint
By Jeffrey Elias, Erica Chédin
and Betty Guo
Adamopoulos
GRANTS FACILITATION
UNIT HELPS DEVELOP
SKILLS AND STRATEGIES
Tong
Each edition of the Faculty Newsletter introduces several faculty colleagues who recently joined the UC Davis
Health System community. Watch for more new clinical and research staff members in the next issue.
Iannis Adamopoulos studying
mechanisms of immune-related
bone loss
training in advanced heart failure
therapies, including use of mechanical
assistive devices to help patients at the end
stages of their disease.
A newly emerging area of research called
Tong, board-certified in internal
“osteoimmunology” concentrates on the
interface between the skeletal and immune medicine and cardiology, is a cosystems. Working in that field is researcher investigator in a multi-center study of
transition-of-care strategies for heart
Iannis E. Adamopoulos, B.Sc. (Hons),
failure inpatients who are being discharged
M.Phil., D.Phil., an assistant professor
from hospitalization. The trial is intended
of internal medicine with expertise in
to determine if use of a central call center
immune bone loss. His laboratory is
or a telemedicine approach will improve
focusing on hematopoietic stem cells in
heart failure patient outcomes and
bone marrow that give rise to T cells that
consistency of care among University of
are important in inflammation, and to
California Medical Centers.
osteoclasts that regulate bone resorption.
Other new colleagues
Adamopoulos also is an assistant
investigator in the Institute for Pediatric
n Emergency medicine physician Tony
Regenerative Medicine at Shriners
Berger, M.D., M.S., is researching the
Hospitals for Children. He and his
use of biomarkers in screening, and
colleagues are studying the role of
strategies for the care of emergency
immune cytokines in the activation of
department patients with severe sepsis
and septic shock. Berger, an assistant
osteoclasts and inflammation that lead
professor of clinical emergency
to inflammatory arthritis. Using various
medicine who treats patients in the
models of arthritis and in vitro assays,
UC Davis Emergency Department,
they are working to define the cellular and
also is studying emergency use
molecular mechanisms that take place in
of ultrasound, and application of
this interplay of the immune and skeletal
biomedical informatics interventions
systems.
for improvement of patient care in
Kathy Tong directs Heart Failure
emergency settings.
Program and investigates
nPediatrician Jacqueline M. Evans,
transitional care
M.D., Ph.D., part of UC Davis
Cardiologist Kathy Tong, M.D., an
Children’s Hospital’s pediatric intensive
assistant professor of cardiovascular
care unit team, is investigating ways to
medicine who specializes in heart
improve care of children with complex
transplantation and care of patients who
congenital heart disease. Evans, an
have advanced heart failure, is director
assistant professor of pediatrics, is
of the Department of Internal Medicine’s
board certified in general pediatrics
Heart Failure Program. She has undergone
and pediatric critical care medicine.
2
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
DISTINCTION continued from page 1
Interested in medical transportation
of critically ill children, she also is
the medical director of the UC Davis
Children’s Hospital Critical Care
Transport Team and is a pediatric
medical advisor to California Shock
Trauma Air Rescue (CALSTAR), a
nonprofit air ambulance service.
n
Arta Monir Monjazeb, M.D., Ph.D.,
a board-certified assistant professor of
radiation oncology who treats breast
cancer, sarcomas and malignancies of
the gastrointestinal tract, is studying
the effects of combining radiotherapy
and immunotherapy to treat
disseminated disease. Believing that
harnessing the body’s immune system
may help control metastatic disease, he
is investigating whether radiotherapy
and immunotherapy in combination
may be able to function as an in-situ
anti-tumor vaccination.
n
Crystal M. Ripplinger, Ph.D., an
assistant professor in residence in
the Department of Pharmacology, is
working to understand the structural
and molecular mechanisms of deadly
cardiac arrhythmias. Anti-arrhythmic
drugs often are ineffective because
they primarily treat the symptom
(arrhythmia) rather than the cause
(molecular, structural and electrical
remodeling). Ripplinger’s lab combines
structural, molecular and functional
imaging in vivo as well as in vitro in
isolated hearts from animal models
of cardiac disease, with the intention
of devising novel therapies that
target underlying causes of cardiac
arrhythmias.
Identifying grant funding sources
compatible with research studies,
preparing proposal documentation,
developing application proposals, and
navigating application materials are often
daunting, time consuming processes.
Fortunately, help is available for members
of the UC Davis Health System scholarly
community through the Grants Facilitation
Office.
The UC Davis School of Medicine’s
Grants Facilitation Office began as part
of the vision of Claire Pomeroy, vice
chancellor for human health sciences and
School of Medicine dean, to develop the
UC Davis Clinical Research Investigator
Services Program (CRISP). The visionary
CRISP program was a forerunner to one
of the 12 original (and recently renewed)
NIH-funded Clinical and Translational
Science Awards (CTSA).
The Grants Facilitation Office is part of
the School of Medicine’s Office of Research
(the director of which is Ted Wandzilak),
and has been integrated into the UC Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
by Lars Berglund, senior associate dean for
research and CTSC director.
The Grants Facilitation Office team
includes Director-Manager Jeffrey W. Elias,
Ph.D., and Grants Coordination Officers
Erica Chédin, Ph.D. and Betty Guo, Ph.D.
This office helps medical school faculty
identify funding opportunities and develop
grant applications for a variety of funding
agencies (particularly NIH) and funding
mechanisms, including multi-investigator
grants and training grants.
The Grants Facilitation team members
have guided junior faculty members
toward their first major research award,
as well as worked with established
3
Emi Manning
officevisit
Grants Facilitation Office team members (L-R)
Erica Chédin, Jeffrey Elias and Betty Guo.
investigators to maintain a continuous
stream of funding. They also assist with
manuscript editing and conduct several
training programs – including the annual
“Grantsmanship for Success” two-day
workshop and classroom instruction for
various UC Davis training programs. These
programs focus on developing scientific
writing and other skills needed to navigate
the grant writing and submission process.
By working with the School of
Medicine’s highly talented pool of
investigators, the Grants Facilitation Office
has been instrumental in securing funding
for many diverse mechanisms:
1) career development awards (K-series);
2) individual research awards (R-series);
3) institutional training grants (T- or
K-series and HHMI training grants); and
4) multi-investigator program project and
center grants (P- or U-series). Examples
of the latter two include the UC Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
(CTSC), the UC Davis Neurotherapeutics
Research Institute, the NeuroNEXT Center,
and the Emergency Medicine K12 training
grant.
In an increasingly competitive and
constantly changing research environment,
grant writing requires more than placing
an idea on forms and hoping to be funded.
Successful grant writing relies on finetuning writing skills, communicating
with the funding agency, making strategic
choices, and finding ways to develop a
competitive edge. The Grants Facilitation
team strives to advance the development
of faculty research careers by assisting
with publications, funding strategies and
research proposals.
For more information visit http://www.
ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ctsc/area/core/corefacilitation.html.
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
autism. The finding is the first to
demonstrate a genetic mechanism
influencing development of the
neurodevelopmental disorder in
children. Co-principal investigator
Judy Van de Water, an immunologist
who is a professor of internal
medicine and is affiliated with the
UC Davis MIND Institute, said the
study’s findings may lead to a genetic
screening test to identify susceptibility
to having an autistic child.
Racial inequities in CT scanning:
A study by researchers at UC Davis
has found that white children
are more likely to receive cranial
computed tomography (CT) scans
than Hispanics or African-Americans
in an emergency department following
minor head trauma. The findings do
not indicate underuse of CT scans
in treating African-American and
Hispanic children, but rather suggest
that white children may receive CT
scans too commonly, thereby exposing
them to radiation unnecessarily. The
study’s lead author, JoAnne E. Natale,
is an associate professor of pediatric
critical care medicine at the UC Davis
School of Medicine, and medical
director of the UC Davis Children’s
Hospital Pediatric Intensive Care
Unit. Her analysis was based on data
compiled in 2009 by coauthor Nathan
Kuppermann, chair of the UC Davis
Department of Emergency Medicine.
Researchers discover protein
responsible for fat storage:
Discovery by UC Davis Health System
researchers that a protein called
galectin-12 plays a key role in fat
storage could lead to improvements
in treating obesity and diabetes.
The study, for which Fu-Tong Liu
was senior author, found that mice
without the ability to make the
protein stored 40 percent less body
fat and had increased fat metabolism
and decreased insulin resistance
in comparison to other mice. Liu,
distinguished professor and chair
continued on page 5
4
facultyrounds
A welcome to new
faculty colleagues
VCF AWARDEE TUAN DOAN: ‘Medicine is a
calling in vietnamese society’
Family medicine physician Tuan Doan, a
UC Davis Health System volunteer clinical
faculty (VCF) member, says that teaching
has taught him much about himself and
the field of medicine.
“In my view, teaching involves selflearning as well. By teaching, I have
learned a lot about what I don’t know, and
my students have kept me honest about
my own self-education via their thoughtful
questions,” said Doan, lead physician at
Sutter Medical Group’s Rocklin Family
Medicine clinic.
This past March, UC Davis Health
System honored Doan with a Volunteer
Clinical Faculty Award. Kay Nelsen,
associate professor of family and
community medicine, commended
Doan in the Department of Family and
Community Medicine’s nomination
submission.
“His commitment to teaching
exemplifies the best of the collaboration
of academic medicine and community
practices,” Nelsen wrote. “He has served as
a role model for our medical students and
has been an outstanding representative of
our specialty.”
Doan, who has been a VCF member
with the UC Davis Department of Family
and Community Medicine since 1998,
serves as a preceptor in a primary-care
clerkship for third-year medical students.
He also has been a preceptor for UC Davis
first-year medical students in Doctoring
1 and for students in the Family Nurse
Practitioner and Physician Assistant
Program. He additionally is a preceptor
for University of Phoenix and Stanford
University physician assistant and nurse
practitioner students.
“I enjoy passing knowledge, which I
have accumulated during my education
process, to the next generation of
practicing physicians and future physician
leaders in our society,” Doan explained.
Doan carries a caseload of nearly 7,000
patients and oversees two colleagues, two
nurse practitioners and two physician
assistants in his clinic, the clientele of
which ranges from newborns to geriatric
patients.
“My greatest strength in clinical
medicine is convincing my patients to buy
into preventive healthcare by practicing
healthful daily activities. I encourage
them to stop smoking and to exercise,
control their weight, relax, and get
appropriate immunizations. In the long
run, prevention will cost society less than
treatment of illness,” Doan said.
He first became interested in medicine
as a youngster in his native Vietnam, from
which he and his family members fled as
refugees in 1975 when North Vietnamese
forces captured Saigon (Ho Chi Minh
City).
“Most of my relatives on my mother’s
side of my family are physicians or in
health-related professions. Medicine is
a calling in the Vietnamese society, to
alleviate the pain and suffering of our
fellow human beings,” Doan explained.
Speaking only Vietnamese and
French, Doan settled at 14 years of age
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
with his family in Florida and quickly
acclimated to his new surroundings. He
supported himself as a custodian at a
McDonald’s restaurant to help pay for his
undergraduate education. After obtaining
dual bachelor’s degrees in chemistry
and health sciences at the University of
Florida, Gainesville, he enrolled at The
Ohio State University. There he obtained
a graduate degree in physiology and then
his MD degree in 1991.
Doan qualified for a U.S. Air
Force scholarship by enlisting as a
commissioned second lieutenant. He
served a three-year residency in family
medicine at David Grant Medical Center
at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, in
a program affiliated with UC Davis. He
completed his residency as a captain
and was dispatched as a member of the
425th Air Base Squadron to Izmir, Turkey.
There he was assigned as a staff family
physician and liaison officer in charge of
the radiology department, overseeing the
Turkish radiologists with whom the base
contracted to read X-rays.
With a promotion to the rank of
major, he was transferred in 1996 to
McClellan Air Force base in North
Highlands as a senior staff family
physician. While there, he learned the
UC Davis physician assistant education
program needed a preceptor for students.
Doan volunteered, beginning his 13year association as a VCF member. Upon
Doan’s military discharge in 1998, he was
recruited to join the Sutter Medical Group
staff.
In his work with students, Doan seeks
to impart more than medical knowledge.
“Hopefully, through my teaching and
precepting, my students will develop
a sense of compassion for the patients
under their care, and develop better
communication skills and rapport with
the patient,” Doan said.
viewpoint
By Jeffrey Elias, Erica Chédin
and Betty Guo
Adamopoulos
GRANTS FACILITATION
UNIT HELPS DEVELOP
SKILLS AND STRATEGIES
Tong
Each edition of the Faculty Newsletter introduces several faculty colleagues who recently joined the UC Davis
Health System community. Watch for more new clinical and research staff members in the next issue.
Iannis Adamopoulos studying
mechanisms of immune-related
bone loss
training in advanced heart failure
therapies, including use of mechanical
assistive devices to help patients at the end
stages of their disease.
A newly emerging area of research called
Tong, board-certified in internal
“osteoimmunology” concentrates on the
interface between the skeletal and immune medicine and cardiology, is a cosystems. Working in that field is researcher investigator in a multi-center study of
transition-of-care strategies for heart
Iannis E. Adamopoulos, B.Sc. (Hons),
failure inpatients who are being discharged
M.Phil., D.Phil., an assistant professor
from hospitalization. The trial is intended
of internal medicine with expertise in
to determine if use of a central call center
immune bone loss. His laboratory is
or a telemedicine approach will improve
focusing on hematopoietic stem cells in
heart failure patient outcomes and
bone marrow that give rise to T cells that
consistency of care among University of
are important in inflammation, and to
California Medical Centers.
osteoclasts that regulate bone resorption.
Other new colleagues
Adamopoulos also is an assistant
investigator in the Institute for Pediatric
n Emergency medicine physician Tony
Regenerative Medicine at Shriners
Berger, M.D., M.S., is researching the
Hospitals for Children. He and his
use of biomarkers in screening, and
colleagues are studying the role of
strategies for the care of emergency
immune cytokines in the activation of
department patients with severe sepsis
and septic shock. Berger, an assistant
osteoclasts and inflammation that lead
professor of clinical emergency
to inflammatory arthritis. Using various
medicine who treats patients in the
models of arthritis and in vitro assays,
UC Davis Emergency Department,
they are working to define the cellular and
also is studying emergency use
molecular mechanisms that take place in
of ultrasound, and application of
this interplay of the immune and skeletal
biomedical informatics interventions
systems.
for improvement of patient care in
Kathy Tong directs Heart Failure
emergency settings.
Program and investigates
nPediatrician Jacqueline M. Evans,
transitional care
M.D., Ph.D., part of UC Davis
Cardiologist Kathy Tong, M.D., an
Children’s Hospital’s pediatric intensive
assistant professor of cardiovascular
care unit team, is investigating ways to
medicine who specializes in heart
improve care of children with complex
transplantation and care of patients who
congenital heart disease. Evans, an
have advanced heart failure, is director
assistant professor of pediatrics, is
of the Department of Internal Medicine’s
board certified in general pediatrics
Heart Failure Program. She has undergone
and pediatric critical care medicine.
2
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
DISTINCTION continued from page 1
Interested in medical transportation
of critically ill children, she also is
the medical director of the UC Davis
Children’s Hospital Critical Care
Transport Team and is a pediatric
medical advisor to California Shock
Trauma Air Rescue (CALSTAR), a
nonprofit air ambulance service.
n
Arta Monir Monjazeb, M.D., Ph.D.,
a board-certified assistant professor of
radiation oncology who treats breast
cancer, sarcomas and malignancies of
the gastrointestinal tract, is studying
the effects of combining radiotherapy
and immunotherapy to treat
disseminated disease. Believing that
harnessing the body’s immune system
may help control metastatic disease, he
is investigating whether radiotherapy
and immunotherapy in combination
may be able to function as an in-situ
anti-tumor vaccination.
n
Crystal M. Ripplinger, Ph.D., an
assistant professor in residence in
the Department of Pharmacology, is
working to understand the structural
and molecular mechanisms of deadly
cardiac arrhythmias. Anti-arrhythmic
drugs often are ineffective because
they primarily treat the symptom
(arrhythmia) rather than the cause
(molecular, structural and electrical
remodeling). Ripplinger’s lab combines
structural, molecular and functional
imaging in vivo as well as in vitro in
isolated hearts from animal models
of cardiac disease, with the intention
of devising novel therapies that
target underlying causes of cardiac
arrhythmias.
Identifying grant funding sources
compatible with research studies,
preparing proposal documentation,
developing application proposals, and
navigating application materials are often
daunting, time consuming processes.
Fortunately, help is available for members
of the UC Davis Health System scholarly
community through the Grants Facilitation
Office.
The UC Davis School of Medicine’s
Grants Facilitation Office began as part
of the vision of Claire Pomeroy, vice
chancellor for human health sciences and
School of Medicine dean, to develop the
UC Davis Clinical Research Investigator
Services Program (CRISP). The visionary
CRISP program was a forerunner to one
of the 12 original (and recently renewed)
NIH-funded Clinical and Translational
Science Awards (CTSA).
The Grants Facilitation Office is part of
the School of Medicine’s Office of Research
(the director of which is Ted Wandzilak),
and has been integrated into the UC Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
by Lars Berglund, senior associate dean for
research and CTSC director.
The Grants Facilitation Office team
includes Director-Manager Jeffrey W. Elias,
Ph.D., and Grants Coordination Officers
Erica Chédin, Ph.D. and Betty Guo, Ph.D.
This office helps medical school faculty
identify funding opportunities and develop
grant applications for a variety of funding
agencies (particularly NIH) and funding
mechanisms, including multi-investigator
grants and training grants.
The Grants Facilitation team members
have guided junior faculty members
toward their first major research award,
as well as worked with established
3
Emi Manning
officevisit
Grants Facilitation Office team members (L-R)
Erica Chédin, Jeffrey Elias and Betty Guo.
investigators to maintain a continuous
stream of funding. They also assist with
manuscript editing and conduct several
training programs – including the annual
“Grantsmanship for Success” two-day
workshop and classroom instruction for
various UC Davis training programs. These
programs focus on developing scientific
writing and other skills needed to navigate
the grant writing and submission process.
By working with the School of
Medicine’s highly talented pool of
investigators, the Grants Facilitation Office
has been instrumental in securing funding
for many diverse mechanisms:
1) career development awards (K-series);
2) individual research awards (R-series);
3) institutional training grants (T- or
K-series and HHMI training grants); and
4) multi-investigator program project and
center grants (P- or U-series). Examples
of the latter two include the UC Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
(CTSC), the UC Davis Neurotherapeutics
Research Institute, the NeuroNEXT Center,
and the Emergency Medicine K12 training
grant.
In an increasingly competitive and
constantly changing research environment,
grant writing requires more than placing
an idea on forms and hoping to be funded.
Successful grant writing relies on finetuning writing skills, communicating
with the funding agency, making strategic
choices, and finding ways to develop a
competitive edge. The Grants Facilitation
team strives to advance the development
of faculty research careers by assisting
with publications, funding strategies and
research proposals.
For more information visit http://www.
ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ctsc/area/core/corefacilitation.html.
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
autism. The finding is the first to
demonstrate a genetic mechanism
influencing development of the
neurodevelopmental disorder in
children. Co-principal investigator
Judy Van de Water, an immunologist
who is a professor of internal
medicine and is affiliated with the
UC Davis MIND Institute, said the
study’s findings may lead to a genetic
screening test to identify susceptibility
to having an autistic child.
Racial inequities in CT scanning:
A study by researchers at UC Davis
has found that white children
are more likely to receive cranial
computed tomography (CT) scans
than Hispanics or African-Americans
in an emergency department following
minor head trauma. The findings do
not indicate underuse of CT scans
in treating African-American and
Hispanic children, but rather suggest
that white children may receive CT
scans too commonly, thereby exposing
them to radiation unnecessarily. The
study’s lead author, JoAnne E. Natale,
is an associate professor of pediatric
critical care medicine at the UC Davis
School of Medicine, and medical
director of the UC Davis Children’s
Hospital Pediatric Intensive Care
Unit. Her analysis was based on data
compiled in 2009 by coauthor Nathan
Kuppermann, chair of the UC Davis
Department of Emergency Medicine.
Researchers discover protein
responsible for fat storage:
Discovery by UC Davis Health System
researchers that a protein called
galectin-12 plays a key role in fat
storage could lead to improvements
in treating obesity and diabetes.
The study, for which Fu-Tong Liu
was senior author, found that mice
without the ability to make the
protein stored 40 percent less body
fat and had increased fat metabolism
and decreased insulin resistance
in comparison to other mice. Liu,
distinguished professor and chair
continued on page 5
4
facultyrounds
A welcome to new
faculty colleagues
VCF AWARDEE TUAN DOAN: ‘Medicine is a
calling in vietnamese society’
Family medicine physician Tuan Doan, a
UC Davis Health System volunteer clinical
faculty (VCF) member, says that teaching
has taught him much about himself and
the field of medicine.
“In my view, teaching involves selflearning as well. By teaching, I have
learned a lot about what I don’t know, and
my students have kept me honest about
my own self-education via their thoughtful
questions,” said Doan, lead physician at
Sutter Medical Group’s Rocklin Family
Medicine clinic.
This past March, UC Davis Health
System honored Doan with a Volunteer
Clinical Faculty Award. Kay Nelsen,
associate professor of family and
community medicine, commended
Doan in the Department of Family and
Community Medicine’s nomination
submission.
“His commitment to teaching
exemplifies the best of the collaboration
of academic medicine and community
practices,” Nelsen wrote. “He has served as
a role model for our medical students and
has been an outstanding representative of
our specialty.”
Doan, who has been a VCF member
with the UC Davis Department of Family
and Community Medicine since 1998,
serves as a preceptor in a primary-care
clerkship for third-year medical students.
He also has been a preceptor for UC Davis
first-year medical students in Doctoring
1 and for students in the Family Nurse
Practitioner and Physician Assistant
Program. He additionally is a preceptor
for University of Phoenix and Stanford
University physician assistant and nurse
practitioner students.
“I enjoy passing knowledge, which I
have accumulated during my education
process, to the next generation of
practicing physicians and future physician
leaders in our society,” Doan explained.
Doan carries a caseload of nearly 7,000
patients and oversees two colleagues, two
nurse practitioners and two physician
assistants in his clinic, the clientele of
which ranges from newborns to geriatric
patients.
“My greatest strength in clinical
medicine is convincing my patients to buy
into preventive healthcare by practicing
healthful daily activities. I encourage
them to stop smoking and to exercise,
control their weight, relax, and get
appropriate immunizations. In the long
run, prevention will cost society less than
treatment of illness,” Doan said.
He first became interested in medicine
as a youngster in his native Vietnam, from
which he and his family members fled as
refugees in 1975 when North Vietnamese
forces captured Saigon (Ho Chi Minh
City).
“Most of my relatives on my mother’s
side of my family are physicians or in
health-related professions. Medicine is
a calling in the Vietnamese society, to
alleviate the pain and suffering of our
fellow human beings,” Doan explained.
Speaking only Vietnamese and
French, Doan settled at 14 years of age
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
with his family in Florida and quickly
acclimated to his new surroundings. He
supported himself as a custodian at a
McDonald’s restaurant to help pay for his
undergraduate education. After obtaining
dual bachelor’s degrees in chemistry
and health sciences at the University of
Florida, Gainesville, he enrolled at The
Ohio State University. There he obtained
a graduate degree in physiology and then
his MD degree in 1991.
Doan qualified for a U.S. Air
Force scholarship by enlisting as a
commissioned second lieutenant. He
served a three-year residency in family
medicine at David Grant Medical Center
at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, in
a program affiliated with UC Davis. He
completed his residency as a captain
and was dispatched as a member of the
425th Air Base Squadron to Izmir, Turkey.
There he was assigned as a staff family
physician and liaison officer in charge of
the radiology department, overseeing the
Turkish radiologists with whom the base
contracted to read X-rays.
With a promotion to the rank of
major, he was transferred in 1996 to
McClellan Air Force base in North
Highlands as a senior staff family
physician. While there, he learned the
UC Davis physician assistant education
program needed a preceptor for students.
Doan volunteered, beginning his 13year association as a VCF member. Upon
Doan’s military discharge in 1998, he was
recruited to join the Sutter Medical Group
staff.
In his work with students, Doan seeks
to impart more than medical knowledge.
“Hopefully, through my teaching and
precepting, my students will develop
a sense of compassion for the patients
under their care, and develop better
communication skills and rapport with
the patient,” Doan said.
viewpoint
By Jeffrey Elias, Erica Chédin
and Betty Guo
Adamopoulos
GRANTS FACILITATION
UNIT HELPS DEVELOP
SKILLS AND STRATEGIES
Tong
Each edition of the Faculty Newsletter introduces several faculty colleagues who recently joined the UC Davis
Health System community. Watch for more new clinical and research staff members in the next issue.
Iannis Adamopoulos studying
mechanisms of immune-related
bone loss
training in advanced heart failure
therapies, including use of mechanical
assistive devices to help patients at the end
stages of their disease.
A newly emerging area of research called
Tong, board-certified in internal
“osteoimmunology” concentrates on the
interface between the skeletal and immune medicine and cardiology, is a cosystems. Working in that field is researcher investigator in a multi-center study of
transition-of-care strategies for heart
Iannis E. Adamopoulos, B.Sc. (Hons),
failure inpatients who are being discharged
M.Phil., D.Phil., an assistant professor
from hospitalization. The trial is intended
of internal medicine with expertise in
to determine if use of a central call center
immune bone loss. His laboratory is
or a telemedicine approach will improve
focusing on hematopoietic stem cells in
heart failure patient outcomes and
bone marrow that give rise to T cells that
consistency of care among University of
are important in inflammation, and to
California Medical Centers.
osteoclasts that regulate bone resorption.
Other new colleagues
Adamopoulos also is an assistant
investigator in the Institute for Pediatric
n Emergency medicine physician Tony
Regenerative Medicine at Shriners
Berger, M.D., M.S., is researching the
Hospitals for Children. He and his
use of biomarkers in screening, and
colleagues are studying the role of
strategies for the care of emergency
immune cytokines in the activation of
department patients with severe sepsis
and septic shock. Berger, an assistant
osteoclasts and inflammation that lead
professor of clinical emergency
to inflammatory arthritis. Using various
medicine who treats patients in the
models of arthritis and in vitro assays,
UC Davis Emergency Department,
they are working to define the cellular and
also is studying emergency use
molecular mechanisms that take place in
of ultrasound, and application of
this interplay of the immune and skeletal
biomedical informatics interventions
systems.
for improvement of patient care in
Kathy Tong directs Heart Failure
emergency settings.
Program and investigates
nPediatrician Jacqueline M. Evans,
transitional care
M.D., Ph.D., part of UC Davis
Cardiologist Kathy Tong, M.D., an
Children’s Hospital’s pediatric intensive
assistant professor of cardiovascular
care unit team, is investigating ways to
medicine who specializes in heart
improve care of children with complex
transplantation and care of patients who
congenital heart disease. Evans, an
have advanced heart failure, is director
assistant professor of pediatrics, is
of the Department of Internal Medicine’s
board certified in general pediatrics
Heart Failure Program. She has undergone
and pediatric critical care medicine.
2
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
DISTINCTION continued from page 1
Interested in medical transportation
of critically ill children, she also is
the medical director of the UC Davis
Children’s Hospital Critical Care
Transport Team and is a pediatric
medical advisor to California Shock
Trauma Air Rescue (CALSTAR), a
nonprofit air ambulance service.
n
Arta Monir Monjazeb, M.D., Ph.D.,
a board-certified assistant professor of
radiation oncology who treats breast
cancer, sarcomas and malignancies of
the gastrointestinal tract, is studying
the effects of combining radiotherapy
and immunotherapy to treat
disseminated disease. Believing that
harnessing the body’s immune system
may help control metastatic disease, he
is investigating whether radiotherapy
and immunotherapy in combination
may be able to function as an in-situ
anti-tumor vaccination.
n
Crystal M. Ripplinger, Ph.D., an
assistant professor in residence in
the Department of Pharmacology, is
working to understand the structural
and molecular mechanisms of deadly
cardiac arrhythmias. Anti-arrhythmic
drugs often are ineffective because
they primarily treat the symptom
(arrhythmia) rather than the cause
(molecular, structural and electrical
remodeling). Ripplinger’s lab combines
structural, molecular and functional
imaging in vivo as well as in vitro in
isolated hearts from animal models
of cardiac disease, with the intention
of devising novel therapies that
target underlying causes of cardiac
arrhythmias.
Identifying grant funding sources
compatible with research studies,
preparing proposal documentation,
developing application proposals, and
navigating application materials are often
daunting, time consuming processes.
Fortunately, help is available for members
of the UC Davis Health System scholarly
community through the Grants Facilitation
Office.
The UC Davis School of Medicine’s
Grants Facilitation Office began as part
of the vision of Claire Pomeroy, vice
chancellor for human health sciences and
School of Medicine dean, to develop the
UC Davis Clinical Research Investigator
Services Program (CRISP). The visionary
CRISP program was a forerunner to one
of the 12 original (and recently renewed)
NIH-funded Clinical and Translational
Science Awards (CTSA).
The Grants Facilitation Office is part of
the School of Medicine’s Office of Research
(the director of which is Ted Wandzilak),
and has been integrated into the UC Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
by Lars Berglund, senior associate dean for
research and CTSC director.
The Grants Facilitation Office team
includes Director-Manager Jeffrey W. Elias,
Ph.D., and Grants Coordination Officers
Erica Chédin, Ph.D. and Betty Guo, Ph.D.
This office helps medical school faculty
identify funding opportunities and develop
grant applications for a variety of funding
agencies (particularly NIH) and funding
mechanisms, including multi-investigator
grants and training grants.
The Grants Facilitation team members
have guided junior faculty members
toward their first major research award,
as well as worked with established
3
Emi Manning
officevisit
Grants Facilitation Office team members (L-R)
Erica Chédin, Jeffrey Elias and Betty Guo.
investigators to maintain a continuous
stream of funding. They also assist with
manuscript editing and conduct several
training programs – including the annual
“Grantsmanship for Success” two-day
workshop and classroom instruction for
various UC Davis training programs. These
programs focus on developing scientific
writing and other skills needed to navigate
the grant writing and submission process.
By working with the School of
Medicine’s highly talented pool of
investigators, the Grants Facilitation Office
has been instrumental in securing funding
for many diverse mechanisms:
1) career development awards (K-series);
2) individual research awards (R-series);
3) institutional training grants (T- or
K-series and HHMI training grants); and
4) multi-investigator program project and
center grants (P- or U-series). Examples
of the latter two include the UC Davis
Clinical and Translational Science Center
(CTSC), the UC Davis Neurotherapeutics
Research Institute, the NeuroNEXT Center,
and the Emergency Medicine K12 training
grant.
In an increasingly competitive and
constantly changing research environment,
grant writing requires more than placing
an idea on forms and hoping to be funded.
Successful grant writing relies on finetuning writing skills, communicating
with the funding agency, making strategic
choices, and finding ways to develop a
competitive edge. The Grants Facilitation
team strives to advance the development
of faculty research careers by assisting
with publications, funding strategies and
research proposals.
For more information visit http://www.
ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ctsc/area/core/corefacilitation.html.
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
autism. The finding is the first to
demonstrate a genetic mechanism
influencing development of the
neurodevelopmental disorder in
children. Co-principal investigator
Judy Van de Water, an immunologist
who is a professor of internal
medicine and is affiliated with the
UC Davis MIND Institute, said the
study’s findings may lead to a genetic
screening test to identify susceptibility
to having an autistic child.
Racial inequities in CT scanning:
A study by researchers at UC Davis
has found that white children
are more likely to receive cranial
computed tomography (CT) scans
than Hispanics or African-Americans
in an emergency department following
minor head trauma. The findings do
not indicate underuse of CT scans
in treating African-American and
Hispanic children, but rather suggest
that white children may receive CT
scans too commonly, thereby exposing
them to radiation unnecessarily. The
study’s lead author, JoAnne E. Natale,
is an associate professor of pediatric
critical care medicine at the UC Davis
School of Medicine, and medical
director of the UC Davis Children’s
Hospital Pediatric Intensive Care
Unit. Her analysis was based on data
compiled in 2009 by coauthor Nathan
Kuppermann, chair of the UC Davis
Department of Emergency Medicine.
Researchers discover protein
responsible for fat storage:
Discovery by UC Davis Health System
researchers that a protein called
galectin-12 plays a key role in fat
storage could lead to improvements
in treating obesity and diabetes.
The study, for which Fu-Tong Liu
was senior author, found that mice
without the ability to make the
protein stored 40 percent less body
fat and had increased fat metabolism
and decreased insulin resistance
in comparison to other mice. Liu,
distinguished professor and chair
continued on page 5
4
UC Davis Health System
DISTINCTION continued from page 4
of the Department of Dermatology, said
that galectin-12 appears to trigger fat cells
to conserve rather than burn energy. He
suspects that interruption of that signal
may enable improvement in fat metabolism
and reduction in insulin resistance in
patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Faculty honors
The American Society of Cytopathology
has inducted Lydia Pleotis Howell
president for a yearlong term that began
on Nov. 6. Howell is a professor and chair
of the UC Davis Department of Pathology
and Laboratory Medicine. She will lead
development of a five-year strategic plan
Distinctions
for the society. Previous ASC presidents
Pioneering surgical procedure: UC Davis
include Pap test inventor George
otolaryngologist Peter Belafsky appeared
Papanicolaou.
Nov. 2 on the nationally televised medical
The American College of Emergency
Physicians (ACEP) presented its 2011
Outstanding Contribution in Research
Award to Nathan Kuppermann, professor
of emergency medicine and pediatrics,
and chair of the UC Davis Department of
Emergency Medicine. Kuppermann was
elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2010
and has received numerous other research
awards, including the Pediatric Emergency
Medicine and Critical Care Research Award
from the American Academy of Pediatrics
Otolaryngologist Peter Belafsky and his patient
Section on Emergency Medicine.
Brenda Charett Jensen on the set of The Doctors
television program.
talk show The Doctors with his patient
Brenda Charett Jensen, whose larynx was
transplanted in a historic procedure at UC
Davis Medical Center. Belafsky was among
the team of surgeons who in October 2010
performed the complex 18-hour surgery,
which is considered only the second
documented transplant of its kind in the
world. The transplant restored her ability
to speak, which surgery in 1999 had
impaired.
Primacy in psychiatric residency
recruitment: The percentage of students
graduating from the UC Davis School
of Medicine who chose residencies in
psychiatry during the past six years was
greater than that of any other medical
school in the United States. An analysis
of 127 medical schools from data that the
American Association of Medical Colleges
(AAMC) compiled shows that 11 percent
of UC Davis medical students selected a
psychiatry residency between 2004 and
2010, compared to a nationwide medical
school average of 4.5 percent.
Nathan Kuppermann
The prestigious Institute of Medicine
(IOM) has conferred membership on
Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for human
health sciences and dean of the UC Davis
School of Medicine, and internationally
renowned fetal and neonatal surgeon Diana
L. Farmer, who was appointed chair of
the UC Davis Department of Surgery in
October. Election to the IOM is among
the nation’s highest honors in health and
medicine. Conrad and Pomeroy join
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
Faculty Development Office
2921 Stockton Blvd., Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95817
nine other current and emeritus UC
Davis faculty as members of IOM, an
independent, nonprofit branch of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Developments
Published by the Faculty Development Office
Partnership to create research and
manufacturing hub: UC Davis Health
System, PETNET Solutions Inc. (a
subsidiary of Siemens Medical Solutions
USA Inc.) and Northern California PET
Imaging Center plan to jointly establish
a 12,000-square-foot facility on the
university’s Sacramento campus for
research and training in radiochemistry
and for commercial production of
radiopharmaceutical products used
in positron emission tomography
(PET) scans. The project will include
installation of two medical cyclotrons
for production of PET radioisotopes.
Julie Sutcliffe, associate professor in the
departments of biomedical engineering
and hematology and oncology at UC
Davis, will oversee the new research and
training program.
National neuroscience clinical
trials site designation: The National
Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke (NINDS) has selected UC Davis
Health System as one of 25 clinical sites
nationwide – among only four on the
West Coast – in its new NeuroNEXT
Network for Excellence in Neuroscience
Clinical Trials. The network will support
clinical trials during the next seven years
for neurological disorders, including
brain injury, multiple sclerosis, stroke,
dementias, neuromuscular diseases,
movement disorders and autism. Craig
McDonald, professor and chair of
the UC Davis Department of Physical
Medicine and Rehabilitation, is principal
investigator for the project.
WINTER 2011–2012
Workshops and other activities
You are invited! We encourage you to
enroll in one of the various workshops,
programs and events sponsored by the
Faculty Development Office. For more
event details and to register, visit www.
ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev/ and
click Enroll Online. (Event co-sponsors
are indicated within parentheses.)
Volunteer Clinical Faculty members are
also welcome and encouraged to attend
faculty development events.
(calendar from page 1)
7 Workshop: Putting Together Your Academic Packet
10 Scientific Writing for Publication (JCLP)
14 Workshop: How to Give Effective Feedback
December
17 A Leadership Model for Faculty in Academic Medicine (MCLP)
facultyNewsletter
Published by the Faculty Development
Office, which administers and coordinates
programs that respond to the professional and
career development needs of UC Davis Health
System faculty members.
2921 Stockton Blvd., Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95817
(916) 703-9230
www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
Edward Callahan, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Personnel
Acting Director, Faculty Development
“Reviewing these accomplishments
helps us grasp how far we’ve come as
a community,” said Callahan, who is a
professor of family and community medicine. “We can now turn to completing
our proposed strategic plan, recognizing
our potential for further growth.”
25 Leading Complex Organizations (JCLP, MCLP)
1 Application Deadline: Dean’s
Excellence Awards
March
9 What works: An Alternative Strategy
to Power, Politics & Personality
in the Workplace (JCLP)
8 Dean’s Recognition Reception
13 Breakfast With the Vice Chancellor/
Dean
9 Leadership and Management Skills: Using the Meyers-Briggs Personality Type
Indicator to Your Advantage (JCLP)
16 Budget Management and Business
Reports (MCLP)
15 Workshop: Faculty Merits, Promotions and Tenure
16 The Leadership Circle Profile 360 Orientation (MCLP)
January
22 Workshop: Diagnosing Learners in Clinical Teaching
13 Negotiation Skills (JCLP)
29 Workshop: HSCP Faculty Promotions Process
Cheryl Busman
Program Representative, Faculty Development
cheryl.busman@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Event co-sponsors
EditPros LLC
Writing and Editing
www.editpros.com
MCLP: Mid-Career Leadership Program
20 Relationship Between Medical Staff
and Clinical Enterprise (MCLP)
February
JCLP: Junior Career Leadership Program
2 Breakfast with the Vice Chancellor/
Dean
FEBRUARY continued on page 6
5
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
6
aura of distinction
Incremental honors enhance eminence of UC Davis Health System
The progressive rise in the international
prominence and prestige of UC Davis
Health System is the deserving result
of the collective intelligence, insights,
and scientific and clinical achievements
of thousands of dedicated medical
professionals. From a distance, the
evolution has appeared seamless. Under
greater magnification, it is the aggregate
of a succession of advancements
and honors, motivated by a cohesive
administrative team and strategic plan.
“Members of the UC Davis Health
Community accomplish remarkable
feats on a daily basis,” observes Edward
J. Callahan, associate dean for academic
personnel. “These accomplishments
validate the goal-setting and strategies
that we developed in our earlier
strategic planning. As we finish the
creation of our current strategic plan we
pause here to let the impact of some of
these recent accomplishments settle in,
and to appreciate the level at which we
operate as a scholarly and care-giving
community.”
Selected news announcements
that the Health System’s Public Affairs
Office released during a typical fiveweek period that began this past Oct. 1
exemplify the discoveries, distinctions,
honors and developments that
contribute substantively to the prestige
of UC Davis Health System.
researchers has discovered that
recombination, a DNA repair process,
has a self-correcting mechanism. That
finding may offer clues about ways
in which cancer cells can become
resistant to DNA damage-inducing
treatments. Wolf-Dietrich Heyer,
a professor of microbiology and of
molecular and cellular biology, and
co-leader of Molecular Oncology at UC
Davis Cancer Center, says that greater
understanding of the fundamental
mechanisms of DNA repair systems will
enable new approaches to overcome
treatment resistance.
Study links genetic variant
and autoantibodies to autism:
Researchers at UC Davis have
found that pregnant women with a
particular gene variation are more
likely than other mothers to produce
autoantibodies to the brains of
their developing fetuses, increasing
risk that the children may develop
continued on page 4
Discoveries
New insights about the complexities
of DNA repair: An international
team of scientists led by UC Davis
A student researcher (left) works with Judy
Van de Water (right).
UC Davis Health System
DISTINCTION continued from page 4
of the Department of Dermatology, said
that galectin-12 appears to trigger fat cells
to conserve rather than burn energy. He
suspects that interruption of that signal
may enable improvement in fat metabolism
and reduction in insulin resistance in
patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Faculty honors
The American Society of Cytopathology
has inducted Lydia Pleotis Howell
president for a yearlong term that began
on Nov. 6. Howell is a professor and chair
of the UC Davis Department of Pathology
and Laboratory Medicine. She will lead
development of a five-year strategic plan
Distinctions
for the society. Previous ASC presidents
Pioneering surgical procedure: UC Davis
include Pap test inventor George
otolaryngologist Peter Belafsky appeared
Papanicolaou.
Nov. 2 on the nationally televised medical
The American College of Emergency
Physicians (ACEP) presented its 2011
Outstanding Contribution in Research
Award to Nathan Kuppermann, professor
of emergency medicine and pediatrics,
and chair of the UC Davis Department of
Emergency Medicine. Kuppermann was
elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2010
and has received numerous other research
awards, including the Pediatric Emergency
Medicine and Critical Care Research Award
from the American Academy of Pediatrics
Otolaryngologist Peter Belafsky and his patient
Section on Emergency Medicine.
Brenda Charett Jensen on the set of The Doctors
television program.
talk show The Doctors with his patient
Brenda Charett Jensen, whose larynx was
transplanted in a historic procedure at UC
Davis Medical Center. Belafsky was among
the team of surgeons who in October 2010
performed the complex 18-hour surgery,
which is considered only the second
documented transplant of its kind in the
world. The transplant restored her ability
to speak, which surgery in 1999 had
impaired.
Primacy in psychiatric residency
recruitment: The percentage of students
graduating from the UC Davis School
of Medicine who chose residencies in
psychiatry during the past six years was
greater than that of any other medical
school in the United States. An analysis
of 127 medical schools from data that the
American Association of Medical Colleges
(AAMC) compiled shows that 11 percent
of UC Davis medical students selected a
psychiatry residency between 2004 and
2010, compared to a nationwide medical
school average of 4.5 percent.
Nathan Kuppermann
The prestigious Institute of Medicine
(IOM) has conferred membership on
Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for human
health sciences and dean of the UC Davis
School of Medicine, and internationally
renowned fetal and neonatal surgeon Diana
L. Farmer, who was appointed chair of
the UC Davis Department of Surgery in
October. Election to the IOM is among
the nation’s highest honors in health and
medicine. Conrad and Pomeroy join
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
Faculty Development Office
2921 Stockton Blvd., Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95817
nine other current and emeritus UC
Davis faculty as members of IOM, an
independent, nonprofit branch of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Developments
Published by the Faculty Development Office
Partnership to create research and
manufacturing hub: UC Davis Health
System, PETNET Solutions Inc. (a
subsidiary of Siemens Medical Solutions
USA Inc.) and Northern California PET
Imaging Center plan to jointly establish
a 12,000-square-foot facility on the
university’s Sacramento campus for
research and training in radiochemistry
and for commercial production of
radiopharmaceutical products used
in positron emission tomography
(PET) scans. The project will include
installation of two medical cyclotrons
for production of PET radioisotopes.
Julie Sutcliffe, associate professor in the
departments of biomedical engineering
and hematology and oncology at UC
Davis, will oversee the new research and
training program.
National neuroscience clinical
trials site designation: The National
Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke (NINDS) has selected UC Davis
Health System as one of 25 clinical sites
nationwide – among only four on the
West Coast – in its new NeuroNEXT
Network for Excellence in Neuroscience
Clinical Trials. The network will support
clinical trials during the next seven years
for neurological disorders, including
brain injury, multiple sclerosis, stroke,
dementias, neuromuscular diseases,
movement disorders and autism. Craig
McDonald, professor and chair of
the UC Davis Department of Physical
Medicine and Rehabilitation, is principal
investigator for the project.
WINTER 2011–2012
Workshops and other activities
You are invited! We encourage you to
enroll in one of the various workshops,
programs and events sponsored by the
Faculty Development Office. For more
event details and to register, visit www.
ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev/ and
click Enroll Online. (Event co-sponsors
are indicated within parentheses.)
Volunteer Clinical Faculty members are
also welcome and encouraged to attend
faculty development events.
(calendar from page 1)
7 Workshop: Putting Together Your Academic Packet
10 Scientific Writing for Publication (JCLP)
14 Workshop: How to Give Effective Feedback
December
17 A Leadership Model for Faculty in Academic Medicine (MCLP)
facultyNewsletter
Published by the Faculty Development
Office, which administers and coordinates
programs that respond to the professional and
career development needs of UC Davis Health
System faculty members.
2921 Stockton Blvd., Suite 1400
Sacramento, CA 95817
(916) 703-9230
www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
Edward Callahan, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Personnel
Acting Director, Faculty Development
“Reviewing these accomplishments
helps us grasp how far we’ve come as
a community,” said Callahan, who is a
professor of family and community medicine. “We can now turn to completing
our proposed strategic plan, recognizing
our potential for further growth.”
25 Leading Complex Organizations (JCLP, MCLP)
1 Application Deadline: Dean’s
Excellence Awards
March
9 What works: An Alternative Strategy
to Power, Politics & Personality
in the Workplace (JCLP)
8 Dean’s Recognition Reception
13 Breakfast With the Vice Chancellor/
Dean
9 Leadership and Management Skills: Using the Meyers-Briggs Personality Type
Indicator to Your Advantage (JCLP)
16 Budget Management and Business
Reports (MCLP)
15 Workshop: Faculty Merits, Promotions and Tenure
16 The Leadership Circle Profile 360 Orientation (MCLP)
January
22 Workshop: Diagnosing Learners in Clinical Teaching
13 Negotiation Skills (JCLP)
29 Workshop: HSCP Faculty Promotions Process
Cheryl Busman
Program Representative, Faculty Development
cheryl.busman@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Event co-sponsors
EditPros LLC
Writing and Editing
www.editpros.com
MCLP: Mid-Career Leadership Program
20 Relationship Between Medical Staff
and Clinical Enterprise (MCLP)
February
JCLP: Junior Career Leadership Program
2 Breakfast with the Vice Chancellor/
Dean
FEBRUARY continued on page 6
5
facultyNewsletter | Winter 2011–2012 | www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/facultydev
6
aura of distinction
Incremental honors enhance eminence of UC Davis Health System
The progressive rise in the international
prominence and prestige of UC Davis
Health System is the deserving result
of the collective intelligence, insights,
and scientific and clinical achievements
of thousands of dedicated medical
professionals. From a distance, the
evolution has appeared seamless. Under
greater magnification, it is the aggregate
of a succession of advancements
and honors, motivated by a cohesive
administrative team and strategic plan.
“Members of the UC Davis Health
Community accomplish remarkable
feats on a daily basis,” observes Edward
J. Callahan, associate dean for academic
personnel. “These accomplishments
validate the goal-setting and strategies
that we developed in our earlier
strategic planning. As we finish the
creation of our current strategic plan we
pause here to let the impact of some of
these recent accomplishments settle in,
and to appreciate the level at which we
operate as a scholarly and care-giving
community.”
Selected news announcements
that the Health System’s Public Affairs
Office released during a typical fiveweek period that began this past Oct. 1
exemplify the discoveries, distinctions,
honors and developments that
contribute substantively to the prestige
of UC Davis Health System.
researchers has discovered that
recombination, a DNA repair process,
has a self-correcting mechanism. That
finding may offer clues about ways
in which cancer cells can become
resistant to DNA damage-inducing
treatments. Wolf-Dietrich Heyer,
a professor of microbiology and of
molecular and cellular biology, and
co-leader of Molecular Oncology at UC
Davis Cancer Center, says that greater
understanding of the fundamental
mechanisms of DNA repair systems will
enable new approaches to overcome
treatment resistance.
Study links genetic variant
and autoantibodies to autism:
Researchers at UC Davis have
found that pregnant women with a
particular gene variation are more
likely than other mothers to produce
autoantibodies to the brains of
their developing fetuses, increasing
risk that the children may develop
continued on page 4
Discoveries
New insights about the complexities
of DNA repair: An international
team of scientists led by UC Davis
A student researcher (left) works with Judy
Van de Water (right).