Celebrating your Achievements

Congratulations to all faculty, staff and residents on their many achievements this past month.

Dr. Lena Palaniyappan, who was awarded the Rising Star Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS). Read announcement.

Douglas Jones, PhD, who has been named as the 2018 Ronald G. Calhoun Science Ambassador Award recipient from Partners In Research, a national organization committed to improving communication to the general public on the benefits of medical and health research. Read announcement.

Nicole Campbell, PhD, who as one of Western's Teaching Fellows, will provide educational leadership to the university community through research on teaching and learning. Read more.

Maria Drangova, PhD, who recently received CANet’s Commercialization Grant totalling $300,000 for her project “Catheter Contact-Force Controller for Cardiac Ablation Therapy”. Read the announcement 

The Duennwald Research Group won the 2017 Wellness Contest from the School’s Wellness Committee. Martin Duennwald, PhD, and his team participated in the ALS walk in September 2017. Read more

The recipients of the London Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) Alternate Funding Plan (AFP)
Provincial Innovation Fund.

The Innovation Fund is adjudicated locally by the Academic Medical Organization of Southwestern Ontario (AMOSO) and submitted to the Innovation Fund Provincial Oversight Committee (IFPOC) for final approval. There is $1.3 million allocated to AMOSO annually for this research fund, which targets 1-2 year projects that can result in clinical innovation and can be translatable and scalable across the province. To date over $14.8 million has been funded locally.  

Dr. M. Sara Kuruvilla, Oncology
A Randomized Phase II Trial Comparing Weekly to Three-Week Cisplatin Administered Concurrently with Radiation in the Treatment of Locally Advanced Head and Neck Cancer

Dr. Ian Ball, Medicine
CYCLE RCT: An International, Multi-Centre, Randomized Clinical Trial of Early In-Bed Cycling for Mechanically Ventilated Patients

Dr. Amit Garg, Medicine
Population-Based Studies to Understand the Side Effects of Medications in the Brain-Kidney Axis

Dr. Lakshman Gunaratnam and Dr. Robert Hegele, Medicine
Predicting Delayed Graft function after Deceased Donor Kidney Transplantation using Polymorphisms of Kidney Injury Molecule-1 (KIM-1)

Dr. Aze Wilson and Dr. Richard B. Kim, Medicine
Enhancing Safety and Benefit from Azathioprine Therapy for Our Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients

Dr. Cindy Hutnik, Ophthalmology
Lipid Mediators of Inflammation and Resolution: Investigating the Association with Abnormal Wound Healing and Surgical Outcome

Dr. Douglas D. Fraser, Paediatrics, and Dr. Claudio Martin, Medicine
Early Rehabilitation in Critically ill Children – The PICU Liber8 Pilot Study

Dr. Robert Teasell and Dr. Eldon Loh, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
A Cluster Analysis of Pharmacological Therapy and Pain Intensity and their Correlates in a Sample of Individuals with Chronic Pain

Dr. Lena Palaniyappan, Medical Biophysics and Psychiatry
Preventing Functional Decline in Schizophrenia: A Novel Stratification Approach for High-Risk Clinics

Dr. Kamini Vasudev, Psychiatry
Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) versus Health Enhancement Program (HEP) in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Dr. Michael Chu, Surgery
Patient Specific Mitral Valve Modeling for Surgical Planning and Training

Dr. David Sanders and Dr. Emil Schemitsch, Surgery
Evaluating the Impact of a Dedicated Geriatric Hip Unit at London Health Sciences Centre

Dr. Alp Sener, Surgery
The Effect of Sodium Thiosulfate Organ Preservation in Human Donation after Cardiac Death Renal Transplantation

Dr. Richard Kim, who won one of five Provincial Innovation Awards from the Innovation Fund Provincial Oversight Committee (IFPOC). His project, entitled “Implementation of Pharmacogenomics Guided Warfarin Dosing and INR monitoring for Hospitalized Patients: Focus on Health Economics and Adverse Event Rates", won an award in the category of Cancer, Cardiovascular, Neurological, and Diabetes Management.

To the two new interdisciplinary research teams, who received funding from the Collaborative Research Seed Grants (CRSG) program.

Project Title: In Vivo Evaluation of Pannexin 1 Inhibition on Glioblastoma Growth in the Chick Model Using Bioluminescence Imaging

Investigators:  

  • Silvia Penuela, PhD, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
  • John Ronald, PhD, Department of Medical Biophysics; Scientist, Robarts Research Institute
  • Dr. Matthew Hebb, PhD, Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences
Project Title: Complex Airways‐Disease Translational Team: Etiology of Inflammation Towards Precision Medicine Approaches in Asthma

Investigators:

  • Grace Parraga, PhD, Department of Medical Biophysics; Scientist, Robarts Research Institute
  • Dr. Cory Yamashita, Department of Medicine
  • Lisa Cameron, PhD, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine


Andrew Pruszynski, PhD who has been selected as the inaugural winner of the Society for the Neural Control of Movement Early Career Award.