Recent Awards and Honors from the BIDMC Community

This issue of Awards and Honors highlights accomplishments of the BIDMC community from summer 2019.

Mark Aronson, MD, Professor of Medicine, and Robert Gerszten, MD, Herman Dana Professor of Medicine, were awarded the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award. This award was made to honor and acknowledge the lifetime commitment Silen made to mentoring students, residents and faculty, and is awarded to faculty who have shown a true commitment to mentoring students, residents and faculty.

Deidre Buckley, NP, Brain Aneurysm Institute, received the Medical Professional Champion Award from the Brain Aneurysm Foundation at the foundation’s annual Massachusetts Champions Awards event in Boston in April. The foundation was established 25 years ago by Dr. Buckley and Brain Aneurysm Institute director Christopher Ogilvy, MD.

Elliot Chaikof, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Surgery and Chief of Surgery at BIDMC, received the American Surgical Association’s 2019 Flance-Karl Award. Each year, the Association’s Flance-Karl Award Committee recognizes one surgeon in the United States who has made seminal contributions in translational research that have applications to clinical surgery of any specialty. This award is considered one of the most prestigious recognitions of scientific achievement in the world.

Gregory Ciottone, MD, Director, Division of Disaster Medicine, was elected President of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM). WADEM is a multidisciplinary professional association whose mission is the evidence-based improvement, education and advocacy of emergency and disaster health care and disaster risk reduction. WADEM has representatives from more than 60 countries.

Richard Cummings, PhD, Vice Chair of Basic and Translational Research in the Department of Surgery, and Director of the National Center for Functional Glycomics and the Harvard Medical School Center for Glycoscience, received the 2019 IGO Award from the International Glycoconjugate Organization (IGO) in honor of his exceptional contributions to the field of glycobiology. Cummings will receive the award at the IGO meeting in Milan in August. In addition, Cummings organized and served as Chair of the 13th Jenner Glycobiology and Medicine Symposium held in Cambridge in May.

Stephen Epstein, MD, MPP, was honored with the Pinnacle Award from the Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians (MACEP), the College’s highest award. The Pinnacle Award is given to MACEP members who have made exceptional contributions to MACEP and to Emergency Medicine. Epstein was presented the award at MACEP’s Annual Meeting on May 1, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the College.

Resident Omar Haque, MD, was awarded a Zuckerman Fellowship at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Fellows are selected based on their commitment to public service, leadership abilities, and intellectual and academic achievement. Haque also recently received a Translational Science Fellowship Research Grant from the American Society of Transplantation and a Resident Research Award from the American College of Surgeons. 

Barbara Kahn, MD, Vice Chair for Research Strategy in the Department of Medicine at BIDMC, was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Kahn joins other distinguished leaders recognized by the Academy for their significant achievements in academia, business, government and public affairs.

Mojdeh Kappus, MD, Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellow, received the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) Quality Improvement Award at the annual SAGES meeting in April. Kappus’s study was entitled “Ten-Year Outcomes of Patients Rejected from Undergoing Bariatric Surgery.” 

Matcheri Keshavan MD, Stanley Cobb Professor and Vice Chair for Public Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, was awarded a Research Prize during the Opening Ceremony of the 14th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry in Vancouver. Keshavan was awarded for his scientific work, which has had an important impact in the field of clinical and / or basic research in the area of biological psychiatry.

Frank LoGerfo, MD, Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, was recognized for his exemplary work and mentoring by the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) at its Vascular Research Initiatives Conference in May. LoGerfo is the longtime Director of the NIH T32 Harvard-Longwood Research Training Program in Vascular Surgery, which provides surgical residents with two years of intensive basic and outcomes research training in vascular surgery. Recently renewed, this is the longest funded training program in vascular surgery in the nation and its alumni hold distinguished positions in academic vascular surgery throughout the nation.

Marsha Maurer, DNP, RN, Senior Vice President for Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer at BIDMC, was named an inaugural fellow of the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE).  The AONE fellow designation recognizes a nurse leader’s sustained contributions to the specialty of nursing leadership, commitment to service and influence in shaping health care.

Barry Rosenblum, DPM, Podiatric Surgery, received the 2019 American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons (ACFAS) Distinguished Service Award, one of the college’s highest honors. Rosenblum received the award at the ACFAS Annual Scientific Conference in New Orleans in February.

Clifford Saper, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Neurology, was selected as a recipient of the 2019 Sleep Science Award from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). Saper was recognized for his outstanding achievements in sleep science research on May 9 at the AAN’s 71 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Dhruv Singhal, MD, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, was the first recipient of the Department of Surgery FIRST Program’s pilot Randomized Controlled Trials (pRCT) grant for his project “Lymphatic Reconstitution in Microvascular Breast Reconstruction.” His collaborators include plastic surgery residents Joani Christensen, MD, and Ryan Cauley, MD, MPH, and plastic surgery research fellow Anna Rose Johnson, MPH.

Robert Stern, MD, of the Department of Dermatology, was recognized at the Society for Investigative Dermatology’s annual meeting with the ADEN Founders Award. The award highlights a senior dermato-epidemiologist’s seminal contributions in the field of dermatoepidemiology including inspiring and mentoring their colleagues in the field.

Martina Stippler, MD, Neurosurgery, was the recipient of a 2019-2020 Rabkin Fellowship. The yearlong fellowship, which emphasizes experiential learning, provides faculty with an opportunity to develop the expertise and skills needed to launch or advance academic careers in medical education and/or academic administration. In addition, Stippler started a ThinkFirst chapter at BIDMC. ThinkFirst’s mission is to prevent traumatic brain, spinal cord and other traumatic injuries in children, teens, and adults. Stippler is also serving on the organization’s Board of Directors.

George Tsokos, MD, has been ranked on Expertscape.com as the top cited expert in the world for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. Expertscape examines all medical publications that are indexed in the NIH/National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE database, and ranks the expertise of each author according to the number and type of articles that each expert has authored on the specific condition, disease, or treatment.

Yael Vin, MD, MPH, and Nikhil Agrawal, MD, won the KidneyX Redesign Dialysis Phase 1 award. This competition was organized by HHS and American Society of Nephrology. Through a series of prize competitions offering cash awards and other incentives, KidneyX aims to accelerate the development of innovative medical products and approaches that can significantly improve the way we prevent, diagnose, and treat kidney diseases.

BIDMC received the Greenhealth Partner for Change Award. The Greenhealth Partner for Change Award recognizes superior performance in environmental sustainability, covering a range of different sustainability programs and activities.

The BIDMC Comprehensive Stroke Program was awarded the AHA/Get With The Guidelines® Gold Plus Award for 2019.  Hospitals receiving Get With The Guidelines® Gold Plus Achievement Award must meet quality measures developed to reduce the time between the patient’s arrival at the hospital and treatment with the clot-buster tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, the only drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ischemic stroke.

BIDMC has earned URAC accreditation in the Specialty Pharmacy. URAC is the independent leader in promoting healthcare quality through leadership, accreditation, measurement and innovation. By achieving this status, BIDMC has demonstrated a comprehensive commitment to quality care, improved processes and better patient outcomes.