CTSI faculty and staff receive accolades at annual Jacobs School Awards of Excellence

Presented with the 2018 Staff Award of Excellence for Promoting Inclusion and Cultural Diversity were Danielle Abramo-Balling, community recruitment liaison, and Megan Wilson-Crowley, MPA, community research facilitator. They were cited for their “tireless efforts to raise awareness and build capacity in the Buffalo community to engage community members, community leaders and partner institutions in clinical and translational research through educational outreach, research networking and bringing together a patient advisory group.”

They were also credited with organizing public outreach events that welcomed large numbers of people from the surrounding neighborhood onto the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to learn more about the benefits of participation in clinical and translational research.

The awards were presented by Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion Margarita Dubocovich, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Jacobs School, and Workforce Development core director of the CTSI.

“I am always delighted to present the Awards of Excellence to recognize our students, faculty and staff for their exemplary work in creating a diverse and inclusive campus community,” said Dubocovich. “Their work enhances excellence in health science research and clinical care, and strengthens ties with the communities we serve.”

Supriya D. Mahajan, PhD, a Jacobs School professor of medicine and researcher in the Clinical and Translational Research Center, received the 2018 Faculty Award of Excellence for Promoting Inclusion and Cultural Diversity. She was cited for, among other achievements, serving as the research faculty mentor for the Collaborative Learning and Integrated Mentoring in the Biosciences Undergraduate Program (CLIMB-UP) and the UB Center for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (CURCA) program. A Fulbright scholar herself, she now serves as a reviewer for the UB Fulbright Fellowship program.

Acknowledged by the Jacobs School for their “recognition through prestigious SUNY, national and international awards and leadership appointments in renowned professional societies” were the following CTSI-affiliated faculty:  Margarita Dubocovich, PhD; Steven Fliesler, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and the CTSI Translational Pilot Studies Program director; Jeffrey Lackner, PsyD, professor of medicine, director of UB’s Behavioral Medicine Clinic and co-director of the CTSI Workforce Development Core; and Robert Zivadinov, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and director of both the Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis Center and the CTSI’s Center for Biomedical Imaging.

Kim Griswold, MD, MPH, RN, who is a professor of family medicine and co-investigator on the CTSI’s KL2 Mentored Career Development Award, earned an honorable mention in the pre-clinical category of the Siegel Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Thomas Russo, MD, professor and chief of the infectious disease division of the Department of Medicine in the Jacobs School, and the 2017 Stockton Kimball Awardee, was the recipient of a 2015-16 CTSI pilot study award for a project titled “Development of High-throughput Assay for Inhibitors of Aerobactin Synthesis.”  That research was part of an ongoing research program that he reported on in this year’s Stockton Kimball Lecture. Russo was recruited to UB by CTSI Director Timothy Murphy, MD, in 1994.