AWARD WINNERS (FY2022-2023)
| Travel: | ||
| Recipient | Department/Center | Topic |
| Terence C. Cheng, PhD | Department of Global Health and Population | “China’s innovative internet health marketplace” |
| The adoption of digital technologies in health care has vastly accelerated in many countries over the past two years as the COVID-19 pandemic saw health care providers switch to virtual care options. Over the past decade, China’s internet health care market has significantly expanded, underpinned by the government’s vision and commitment to develop an internet health ecosystem to address longstanding problems with the health system. In this seminar, I will introduce China’s internet health care marketplace, with an emphasis on the market for direct-to-consumer telemedicine services. I will distinguish three characteristics that the internet health marketplace has from traditional physical markets for health care: role of platforms as intermediaries; public hospital doctors in an online-offline dual practice; and patients’ choice and search in a digital health market. Throughout the talk I will draw on insights from newly published research and on-going work. I will conclude with a discussion on the challenges and issues in the market, the need and scope for government regulation, and lay down some emerging themes for future research. | ||
| Shannan Ho Sui, PhD | Department of Biostatistics | “Making an impact through bioinformatics and open science” |
| Open science is the movement to make scientific research, data, software, and the dissemination of research results available to all members of society. I’ll discuss how open science enables our work at the Harvard Chan Bioinformatics Core, and how implementing open science principles helps us to advance research within our community and beyond. | ||
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Kjetil Bjornevik, MD, PhD Marianna Cortese, MD, PhD |
Department of Nutrition | “The role of the Epstein-Barr virus in multiple sclerosis“ |
| Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has long been a top suspect etiologic factor for MS. The proof of causality has, however, remained elusive. This talk will tell the story of how a 20-year collaborative research effort with the US military led to unraveling the link between EBV and MS in a cohort study of 10 million young adults on active duty in the US military and suggests EBV infection as the leading cause of MS. | ||
AWARD WINNERS (FY2021-2022)
| Travel: | ||
| Recipient | Department/Center | Topic |
| Jennifer Mitchel | Department of Environmental Health | How does cellular migration occur in a crowded multicellular environment? The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and the unjamming transition (UJT) each comprises a gateway to collective cellular migration, plasticity and remodeling, but the extent to which these core programs are distinct, overlapping or identical has remained undefined. Here we triggered partial EMT (pEMT) or UJT in differentiated primary human bronchial epithelial cells. After triggering UJT, cell-cell junctions, apico-basal polarity, and barrier function remain intact, cells elongate and align into cooperative migratory packs, and mesenchymal markers of EMT remain unapparent. After triggering pEMT these and other metrics of UJT versus pEMT diverge. A computational model attributes effects of pEMT mainly to diminished junctional tension but attributes those of UJT mainly to augmented cellular propulsion. Through the actions of UJT and pEMT working independently, sequentially, or interactively, those tissues that are subject to development, injury or disease become endowed with rich mechanisms for plasticity, self-repair, and regeneration. |
| Danielle Braun | Department of Biostatistics | Identifying individuals who are at high risk of cancer due to inherited germline mutations is critical for effective implementation of personalized prevention strategies. Most existing models focus on a few specific syndromes; however, recent evidence from multi-gene panel testing shows that many syndromes are overlapping, motivating the development of models that incorporate family history on several cancers and predict mutations for a comprehensive panel of genes. We present PanelPRO, a new, open-source R package providing a fast, flexible back-end for multi-gene, multi-cancer risk modeling with pedigree data. It includes a customizable database with default parameter values estimated from published studies and allows users to select any combinations of genes and cancers for their models, including well-established single syndrome BayesMendel models (BRCAPRO and MMRPRO). This leads to more accurate risk predictions and ultimately has a high impact on prevention strategies for cancer and clinical decision making. |
AWARD WINNERS (FY2020-2021)
| Travel: | ||
| Recipient | Department/Center | Topic |
| Emily Burger | Center for Health Decision Science | To quantify health consequences and evaluate cost-effective health policies related to women’s health and prevention of disease in both high-and low-resource settings using mathematical modeling methods. Her current work is centered on cervical cancer prevention, including the evaluation of alternative cervical cancer screening and human papillomavirus vaccination strategies. |
| Eunyoung Chun | Immunology and Infectious Diseases | To elucidate the interplay between the gut microbiota and host immune system in health, inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. Her research interests include unraveling the molecular and metabolic mechanisms of microbial metabolite (MM)-GPCR in host immune cells and immunity, identifying novel metabolites and cognate GPCRs to impact on host health and disease, and exploring the impact of MM-GPCR on host immune development from early life to adulthood. |
| Kerry Ivey | Nutrition | To detect microorganisms that co-occur in patients with chronic lung disease, with the goal of identifying groups of microorganisms that predict response to therapy in this vulnerable population using mathematical modeling. She works with data from large-scale chronic lung disease cohorts and clinical trials, such as data from the ENCOMPASS research collaboration. |
| Ann Lusk | Nutrition | To develop bicycle environments that are safe and comfortable for women, children, seniors, lower income individuals, and people of color. Lower-income individuals often only have transit and more would bike if cycle tracks existed. |
| Kana Wu | Nutrition | To evaluate the role of diet and lifestyle in cancer prevention and survival by integrating traditional epidemiologic methods with molecular pathologic, genomic, and metabolomic approaches. She is currently working on studies to identify diet and lifestyle factors that can improve CRC survival either as a primary intervention or as an augment to chemotherapy. |
AWARD WINNERS (FY2019-2020)
| Recipient | Department | Topic |
| Non-travel: | ||
| Eve Wittenberg | Social and Behavioral Sciences | To facilitate her research involving the measurement of preferences for use in economic evaluation, specifically the measurement of “spillover effects” of illness onto family members and the incorporation of these values into decision-making. |
| Travel: | ||
| Emmilie Aveling | Health Policy and Management | To serve as moderator of the Professional Development Workshop (PDW) ‘Frontiers in Integration Research’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management where she will build professional relationships with healthcare practitioners and scholars in her field. |
| Selina Bopp | Immunology and Infectious Diseases | To present her work entitled “Dissecting the role of plasmepsin II and III in piperaquine resistant P. falciparum lines” at the Molecular Approaches to Malaria Conference in which she seeks to understand the development of resistance in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum against anti-malarials in the field. |
| Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald | Social and Behavioral Sciences | To present her work linking psychological factors including optimism, a positive psychological determinant of cardiovascular disease and mortality risk, to the length of telomeres in the NHS2 cohort at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. |
| Andrea Bellavia | Environmental Health | To present her work applying novel methodologies in the Environment and Reproductive Health (EARTH) Study, an ongoing cohort of pregnant women attending to a fertility clinic to evaluate exposure to a large mixture of commonly encountered endocrine disrupting chemicals as it relates to pregnancy glucose levels at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. |
| W. Robert Shaw | Immunology and Infectious Diseases | To present his work entitled “Mosquito and parasite genetic determinants of the extrinsic incubation period of Plasmodium falciparum” at the Molecular and Population Biology of Mosquitoes Conference . His research aims to identify new strategies to exploit for vector control, as mosquitoes are now resistant to the insecticides that have contributed so much to recent declines in malaria deaths. |
AWARD WINNERS (FY2018-2019)
| Recipient | Department | Topic |
| Rebekka Lee | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Attendance at the American Public Health Association Annual meeting to present findings from a group randomized control trial testing two training models for the scale up of an evidence-based nutrition and physical activity intervention in after school settings |
| Vasanti Malik | Nutrition | Attendance at the American Heart Association Epidemiology and Prevention /Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health 2019 meeting, as a co-author of multiple abstracts on dietary and lifestyle prevention of obesity, type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related chronic diseases in local and global contexts |
| Lorena Pantano Rubino | Biostatistics | Combining Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy with Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM-FRET) to co-localize molecules inside a cell |
| Khristy J. Thompson | Molecular Metabolism | Attendance at the Society of Toxicology 2019 Meeting to further research in the prevention of toxic Mn deposition in tissues through clearer understanding of uptake, trafficking, and efflux mechanisms |
INAUGURAL AWARD WINNERS (FY2017-2018)
| Recipient | Department | Topic |
| Sarthak Das | Health Policy and Management | Community-based approaches to infectious disease and health service delivery among highly remote and vulnerable communities of Papua New Guinea |
| Maryam S. Farvid | Nutrition | Examining diet-related breast cancer incidence and survival, and understanding underlying mechanisms |
| Jocelyn E. Finlay | Global Health and Population | Women’s empowerment in the context of reproductive health and economic development |
| David Itiro Kasahara | Environmental Health | Relationship of gut microbiota contributes to differences in response to ozone – as relates to obesity-related asthma in mice |
| Sylvia Ley | Nutrition | Lactation duration and progression to Type 2 diabetes among women with a history of gestational diabetes |
| Yanping Li | Nutrition | Association between lifestyle factors and risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and benefit of longevity among Americans and Chinese |
| Ann Lusk | Nutrition | Bicycle use and health |
| Kana Wu | Nutrition | Early-life exposures and colorectal cancer |
| Antonella Zanobetti | Environmental Health | Health consequences of exposure to air pollutants and climate change |
