The FSU Alumni Association will include Tanya Anim (Class of 2010) and Myron Rolle (Class of 2017) among Florida State’s newest Thirty Under 30 on June 20 to recognize their contributions to their professions, communities or FSU as young alumni. 

The 12 students in the Bridge Program presented reports on their research projects Tuesday. At Saturday’s commencement ceremony, the students will receive their diplomas: Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences-Bridge to Clinical Medicine Major. Then, on May 27, they’ll join the College of Medicine’s Class of 2018.

Mary Gerend, Ph.D., associate professor in Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine, has a two-year, $363,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop effective strategies for increasing HPV vaccine completion among low-income Hispanic adolescents. Participants will be recruited in Immokalee.

The Economic Development Council of Tallahassee-Leon County sent a resolution to Governor Rick Scott endorsing a collaborative pilot project between the College of Medicine and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare to explore how the technology of providing health care services over large communications networks could help the region's rural communities.

Deb Danforth, director of the Clinical Learning Center, was selected to represent the Tallahassee Area Council of Advanced Practice Nurses for the 26th Annual Nurse of Excellence Awards sponsored by Capital Regional Medical Center. The announcement stated: “Ms. Danforth excels as a nurse practitioner, educator, mentor, professional advocate, and multidisciplinary collaborator.” She currently is president of the Tallahassee Area Council of Advanced Practice Nurses, vice president of the American Nurse Practitioner Foundation Board of Directors, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Florida Health Care Simulation Alliance.

Harold Bland, M.D., has completed the Children's Mercy Center for Pediatric Bioethics Certificate Program. Bland is one of 26 graduates of the program for 2013-14. The nine-month program is the only medical ethics program in the United States focusing exclusively on pediatrics.

The program is designed to help clinicians understand common pediatric bioethical issues. This year’s class included doctors, nurses, chaplains and social workers from the U.S., Canada, Norway and Saudi Arabia.

“Our Certificate Program teaches participants to analyze the ethical issues particular to pediatrics. We want to train teachers who can go back to their home institutions and help others become better clinicians,” said John Lantos, director of the Children’s Mercy Bioethics Center.

Bland is the pediatrics education director and professor of pediatrics at the Florida State University College of Medicine.

College of Medicine students doing health outreach in Immokalee, with the help of donations from the FSU community, assembled and distributed 100 care packages to migrant farmworkers and their families there.

Marshall Kapp, director of the Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law at Florida State, was the featured Grand Rounds speaker at the Indiana University School of Medicine May 21. He delivered his talk as part of the Department of Dermatology speaker series.

Suzanne Harrison, M.D., is the lead author of the new American Medical Women’s Association position paper on “Sex Trafficking of Women and Girls in the United States.” The paper is designed to “provide information and recommendations for physicians and other healthcare providers who may be in a unique position to identify and care for these victims.” Harrison, associate professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health, is co-chair of AMWA’s anti-trafficking committee, Physicians Against the Trafficking of Humans. Among the co-authors of the position paper are Joedrecka Brown Speights, M.D., also an associate professor in Family Medicine, and medical students Yaowaree Leavell (Class of 2015) and Daniel Miller (Class of 2016). (Read the AMWA press release.)

Richard Nowakowski, chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, was one of the invited speakers during the grand opening of Domi Station, a business incubator in Tallahassee. the 8,000-square-foot site is open to local entrepreneurs who need a place to work and brainstorm with others. Support services and coaching also are available.

Domi Station is being praised as an integral piece of the framework for an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Nowakowski was joined by College of Medicine faculty Les Beitsch and Mike Overton at the event. In his remarks, Nowakowski called the opening of Domi Station an important first step and recommended the addition of wet lab incubator space in future business plans that will promote innovation in Tallahassee.

Link to Tallahassee Democrat article: http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/money/2014/05/22/new-domi-station-incubator-is-open-for-business/9467265/