Commissioner, Connecticut Department of Public Health
Autism: Myth, Legend, and Science
March 30, 2010, 7:00 pm, Student Union Theatre
Dr. J. Robert Galvin
Dr. Robert Galvin was appointed Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health on December 1, 2003. He has broad experience in the field of medicine and public health. Dr. Galvin has been a physician since 1965, and over the course of his career has practiced primary care, emergency, and aviation medicine. As Commissioner, Dr. Galvin’s priorities include public health preparedness, children’s health, and eliminating health disparities. He is also committed to ensuring quality health care for all Connecticut residents.
Chief Executive Officer of Stony Brook University Medical Center
Health Care Reform and the Future of Medical Education
Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 7:00 pm, Student Union Theatre
Dr. Steven Strongwater Photo: Jeanne Neville (Stony Brook University)
Dr. Steven Strongwater became the Chief Executive Officer of Stony Brook University Hospital in 2007. Prior to this, he served as Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, the Director of Clinical Operations, and Hospital Director for the University of Connecticut Health Center from 1996 to 2006.
Over the years, Dr. Strongwater has worked on a broad range of issues including performance improvement, faculty governance, clinical resource management, patient safety, and clinical outcomes. He trained at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Internal Medicine and the University of Michigan in Rheumatology. He is boarded in both Internal Medicine and Rheumatology, serving as a founding fellow of The American College of Rheumatology, and is actively engaged nationally through a variety of professional associations.
Deeply committed to quality and performance improvement as well as models to improve patient satisfaction and employee morale, Dr. Strongwater has been recognized for incorporating the latest medical innovations into the academic medical center. He was instrumental in Stony Brook University Medical Center receiving the Healthcare Association of New York’s (HANYS) Pinnacle Award for Quality and Patient Safety and the Nassau Suffolk Hospital Council’s inaugural Excellence in Patient Safety Award, both in 2009.
View Dr. Strongwater’s presentation or lecture (video courtesy of UCSPAN).
Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 7:00 pm, Student Union Theatre
Dr. Vlad Coric
Dr. Coric completed his undergraduate degree as an Honors Scholar in Physiology and Neurobiology at the University of Connecticut and earned his medical degree at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He completed his internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital and his residency at Yale University School of Medicine’s Psychiatry Residency Training Program. He served as Program-Wide Chief Resident in the Yale University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and as Chief Resident at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System’s National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Coric completed sub-specialty training at Yale University School of Medicine’s Division of Law and Psychiatry in Forensic Psychiatry.
Dr. Coric is currently Group Director of Neuroscience Global Clinical Research at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, where he directs late stage clinical research trials focused on the use of gamma secretase inhibitor (GSI) studies in Alzheimer’s Disease. His research interests also include the neurobiology and treatment of mood/anxiety disorders, OCD, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychobiological indices of stress, psychotic disorders, and substance abuse/dependence.
Dr. Coric has served as the Chief of Inpatient Services at the Yale Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit and is a founding partner of New Haven Forensic Consultants, LLC. Dr. Coric is the Immediate-Past President of the Connecticut Psychiatric Society (a district branch of the American Psychiatric Association) and is currently President of the Yale Psychiatry Alumni Association. Dr. Coric has over 45 peer-reviewed journal and book publications, and interviews with him have appeared in Scientific American, Time, and Men’s Health.
Professor of Pathobiology; Director, Molecular Pathology;
Co-Director, Translational Research Program;
Co-Director, Pharmacogenomics Program;
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and The Audrey
and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
The Digital Human: How Genomics is Impacting You
Wednesday, April 3, 2013, 7:00 pm, Student Union Theatre
Dr. Gregory Tsongalis
Dr. Tsongalis completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in Zoology and Chemistry. After receiving his BS degree, he attended Quinnipiac College where he received a Masters of Health Science as a PA in Pathology. He received his Ph.D. in Pathology from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and completed his postdoctoral training in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After completing his training, Dr. Tsongalis became the first Director of Molecular Pathology at Hartford Hospital. During his tenure there, he became an adjunct faculty member in the School of Allied Health at the University of Connecticut and taught lectures and labs in the Diagnostic Genetic Sciences program.
Dr. Tsongalis’s area of expertise is in clinical molecular diagnostic applications for genetic, hematologic, infectious, and neoplastic diseases. His research interests are in the pathogenesis of solid tumors, disease association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) genotyping, and personalized medicine.
Dr. Tsongalis has been the recipient of numerous investigator/scientist awards. He is a past president of the Association of Molecular Pathology. He is on the editorial board of Clinical Chemistry, the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Virology, Experimental and Molecular Pathology, and several others. He also serves on numerous corporate scientific advisory boards.
Director, Autism & Functional Mapping (AM-FM) Laboratory,
Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center, Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital; Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry,
Yale University School of Medicine; Visiting Assistant Professor of Neuroscience,
Trinity College Institute of Living
Functional MRI – How Emerging Technology Is
Transforming Diagnosis and Treatment of Neuropsychiatric Disorders
Wednesday, April 9, 2014 at 5:00 pm in the Student Union Theatre
Dr. Michal Assaf
Dr. Michal Assaf has studied mental illnesses by implementing cognitive neuroscience and advanced neuroimaging methods such as fMRI and DTI. Her research encompasses a variety of brain disorders including autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and anxiety disorder, as well as substance abuse and addiction. In addition to her research activities, Dr. Assaf leads the Presurgical Functional Mapping program at Hartford Hospital in collaboration with the Department of Neurosurgery, and directs the implementation of structural and functional navigation for the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) research program.
After earning her M.D. at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Assaf completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Psychiatric Neuroimaging at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 2004, she joined the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center at the Institute of Living. Dr. Assaf has been collaborating with researchers from Yale University’s Psychiatry Department, Comparative Medicine Department, and Child Study Center, as well as researchers from the University of Connecticut’s Department of Psychology, the Wohl Institute for Advanced Imaging in Israel, and the Mind Research Network. Dr. Assaf is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the International Society for Autism Research, and the Organization of Human Brain Mapping.
The ocean is still a place filled with undiscovered mysteries, even among the most well-known creatures. One of those creatures is the dolphin. The general public may not realize there are more than 30 species of marine dolphins globally, but two women know it well. Honors alumni Kathleen Dudzinski Ph.D. ’89 (Honors-CLAS) and Heather Heenehan ’09 (Honors-CLAS) have made studying these lively mammals their life’s work.
Dolphins at play
Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski ’89 (Photo courtesy of John Anderson)
Kathleen Dudzinski Ph.D. ’89 is not exactly sure why people are so drawn to dolphins. “I see dolphins as ‘charismatic mega fauna,’ in that they are flashy and most folks want to see them or read about them or meet them or just plain learn more about them,” she said. Dudzinski capitalizes on this appeal to teach the public about all marine life and ocean ecosystems, with the goal of protecting the less flashy creatures as well, such as jellyfish.
Dudzinski is founder and director of the Dolphin Communication Project (DCP), which is based in Connecticut. She started the DCP in 2000 as a way to share knowledge about dolphin communication. The catalyst for the project was the large format release of the film “Dolphins” (2000), which centered on Dudzinski’s research. Her career has been spent studying dolphin social communication and signal exchange, which was the topic of her dissertation at Texas A&M University. She continued the work during two post-doctoral positions at Mie University in Japan. Yet this Connecticut native narrowed in on dolphins much earlier in her life, during a summer internship while still an undergraduate student at UConn.
“I remember always loving animals, science, and the oceans. But I did not know until college how to make those passions a career,” Dudzinski said. She explored internships, lab placements, and student activities based in the sciences, and in the summer of 1987, accepted a position with a whale watching company. “I loved every minute of it, even though we worked 12 hours a day, every day,” she said. “I began reading as much as I could to learn about marine mammals. I’d found a path into merging my passions for animals, the ocean, and science via studying marine mammals.”
Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski ’89 in the Bahamas with spotted dolphins (Photo courtesy of John Anderson)
For Dudzinski, membership in Honors broadened her access to academics and opportunities, and she began to work closely with her advisor, Dr. Nancy Neff, who taught her “the fundamentals to be a good scientist,” Dudzinski said. As a research assistant, Dudzinski contributed to academic writing projects, learning the scholarly peer-review process firsthand, including “how to accept criticisms from colleagues and to move forward, and make a stronger paper,” she said. “I still get reprint requests for that work … [completed] almost 25 years ago!”
In her work now at the DCP, Dudzinski focus specifically on populations of Atlantic spotted dolphins and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins—either residing in the wild (in The Bahamas and Japan) or under human care (in Honduras and a second location in The Bahamas). “To conduct the studies into dolphin communication, the way we have, we need a human-habituated group of dolphins and clear water in which to view them,” she said. Having studied both wild and captive dolphins, Dudzinski finds the habitat does not affect the animals’ communication. For that reason, “I much prefer studying the groups of captive dolphins because we do not have to search for them! Eighty-five percent of our effort studying wild dolphins is simply trying to find them,” she said.
Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski ’89 with an adult female dolphin, Gracie (Photo courtesy of John Anderson)
Whether on location or back in Connecticut, a large part of Dudzinski’s work is outreach. “The mission of DCP is dual: research and education,” she said. This includes sharing what she learns in the ocean with others, through lectures, field work, podcasts, field reports, books, films, internships, and various outlets on their website. Overall, while Dudzinski says dolphins are an important member of the ocean ecosystem, they also serve a greater role: “If people feel a connection to dolphins, then they will want to protect them and their ocean home.”
Dolphins at rest
More than 500 miles away at the Duke University Marine Laboratory, Heather Heenehan ’09 focuses on the sounds dolphins make in relation to their environment. Heenehan is currently working on her Ph.D. at Duke, after having completed her master’s degree there as well. Heenehan was also fascinated by science from a young age, specifically the sea. “In high school, we had a marine biology course that traveled to Key Largo, Fla., which sealed the deal on marine science for me,” she said.
Heather Heenehan ’09
Heenehan hails from New Jersey, and chose UConn for the community feeling she experienced during a whirlwind tour of schools with her mom. She remembers the Honors Program being an important factor in her decision to enroll at UConn. “The Honors Program affected my college experience because it really was my college experience … I made amazing friends in the Honors Program at UConn and am still close with many of them,” she said. Heenehan also fondly remembers the Honors living and learning community in Shippee Hall, where she was surrounded by fellow females in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) whom she found inspiring and supportive.
Heather Heenehan ’09
It was at UConn, through her Honors thesis research, that Heenehan first developed an interest in marine mammal bioacoustics; however, her study of Hawaiian spinner dolphins was sparked during her first year as a master’s student at Duke. The acoustic experience Heenehan brought from her undergraduate work cinched her role on the team for a project that would soon be under way. She has continued her work with the species during her doctoral program, as part of the Spinner Dolphin Acoustics Population Parameters and Human Impacts Research (SAPPHIRE) Project, a joint effort between Duke University and Murdoch University.
Heenehan travels between Hawaii and North Carolina to conduct fieldwork. Her research uses acoustic loggers to collect recordings in their resting bays to better understand dolphin behavior. Spinner dolphins are an important part of the local ecosystem yet the protected species, which rests in bays during the daytime (and are active at night), often encounter destructive experiences with humans. “We have seen people grab and ride wild dolphins during this time of rest,” she said. Her team seeks to observe and record the effects these interactions have on the populations.
Heather Heenehan ’09 educates via Skype
Though Heenehan’s academic career is steeped in research, she is dedicated to educating others about her field as well. She is a “Girls in STEM” blogger for the HuffingtonPost; she hosts her own classroom programming on Skype (“Sounds of the Sea”), where she communicates directly with students regardless of their physical classroom location; and she is also a member of the leadership team for the Scientific Research and Education Network (SciREN), a collaboration between graduate students at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to make scientific research available to schoolchildren. In one of her Huffington Post blogs, Heenehan wrote: “Every time I interact with a K-12 classroom to share my research, I am reenergized. After each visit I feel ready to face the world, or at least my dissertation (which on some days feels like the world)!”
While these women were undergraduates in UConn Honors more than twenty years apart, and have never met, they are both on a mission to protect dolphins, whether at play or at rest. “When I think back to a singular decision I made that got me to where I am today,” said Heenehan, “it was my decision to go to UConn and be part of the Honors Program family.”
Return to the Summer 2014 issue of the Honors Alumni eNewsletter
February 2014-Present: Effects of mutants in the I-domain on Bacteriophage P22 coat protein stability and mature capsid structure
ByFejiroOkifo, Kevin Robbins, Dr. Carol Teschke
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs
As common as the rhinovirus that visits itself upon us every flu season and as insidious as the HIV virus that causes AIDS, viruses have been afflicting the human race since the dawn of time. And yet there is still much to discover about the mechanism by which they infect their hosts. Continue reading →
Hailing from Bristol, CT, Ivan Navarro graduated from Bristol Central High School where he started a chess club in order to share his love of the game. A pre-pharmacy student at UConn, Ivan’s interest in a career in the health professions was significantly influenced by his mother, who is a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant).
Jeremy Figueroa-Ortiz recently returned from a dental mission trip to the Galapagos Island of Isabella, where he, dental students, and dentists provided free dental care. An allied health sciences major with interests in dentistry and policy, Jeremy has also taken part in a clinically based pilot study called Project Good Oral Health, which focused on the oral health of geriatric communities and preventative health education. Jeremy is a bilingual (English and Spanish) graduate of Farmington High School who hails from New Britain, CT.
Spring 2011: Measuring Viral Titer to Analyze Transduction Efficiency in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
By Dr. X. Cindy Tian, Yong Tang, and Michael Tassavor
Stem cells have the ability to dramatically change the medical landscape, allowing regrowth and regeneration of tissues previously irreparable to modern science. Severe burns, spinal breakages, and muscle damage all can benefit, as well as more abstract diseases such as Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and cancer. Until quite recently, however, sources for stem cells were limited to embryonic material.
In 2007, researchers managed to convert specialized adult cells to pluripotent stem cells capable of taking any somatic form in mice. This is highly useful in that it negates any need for embryonic stem cells in stem cell therapy, sidestepping legal and moral issues, as well as public outcry. Furthermore, it allows customized cells grown from the patient’s own cells, preventing immune rejection. Non-embryonic stem cells also have the benefit of allowing research to proceed with government grants, which, depending on the state and federal agencies involved, prohibit embryonic stem cell research. Continue reading →
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