College of Medicine Dean John P. Fogarty and Senior Associate Dean Alma Littles were invited to present at the State University System Health Initiatives Committee Workshop in Tampa this week. 

Fogarty presented on university curriculum and training, while Littles presented on issues in health-care delivery. Both presentations took place Monday, July 21.

Margaret Stephens, database administrator for the College of Medicine, will compete for a national tennis championship in Palm Springs, California this fall. She's a member of the "James Gang" women's team that will represent Florida in the 40-plus division of the United States Tennis Association league-play national championships.

The James Gang recently won the Florida sectional title in Daytona Beach to advance to the national tournament, which takes place Nov. 7-9.

Assistant Professor Sanjay Kumar was recently issued U.S. Patent No. 8,722,403 for "Specimen Preservation Chamber and Method" and $500 from the FSU Research Foundation. The invention constitutes a bubble reservoir for artificial cerebrospinal liquid (aCSF) and a holding platform for preserving acute brain slices used for electrophysiology.

Competing against other medical students, residents and fellows across the state, two FSU medical students were rated among the top three entrants during a poster symposium at the Florida Medical Association’s annual meeting. The FMA recognized the top three abstracts in research and clinical cases, along with symposium winners for research and clinical cases.

College of Medicine Senior Associate Dean Alma Littles served as a judge for the FMA David A. Paulus, M.D., Poster Symposium. She was recused from judging FSU medical student entries.

Sanjana Iyengar (Class of 2015) was recognized for her research abstract, “Clinicopathologic Predictors of Sentinel Lymph Node Metastasis in Thin Melanoma,” and received a $100 prize. Eric Branch (Class of 2016) finished third and received a $50 prize for his research poster, “Biomechanical Evaluation of Arthroscopic Meniscal Repair Constructs.”

Selections were made based on discussion sessions with colleagues and judges during the July 26 meeting in Orlando.

July 2014

Francoise Marvel (M.D., ’12) was the lead author of an article published in the July 2014 edition of the Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine. Its title was “Ideas to iPhones: A 10-Step Framework for Creating Mobile Medical Applications.” Marvel made news when she was a med student by converting her internal medicine mentor’s notes into an app: Madruga and Marvel’s Medical Black Book App.
 

Yet another College of Medicine student’s artwork is being featured on the cover of Academic Medicine. On the August 2014 cover is a painting by Jesse O’Shea (Class of 2015). “Innate Curiosity” is the title of the work, which O’Shea said was a painting on canvas with acrylics converted to digital. He no longer has the original, he said: He gave it as a gift to an attending physician.

Here is an excerpt from the artist’s statement printed in Academic Medicine: “Several hours after the induction of labor, I finally stood holding the newborn. It was a complicated delivery, and I couldn’t help questioning what had transpired. Why did the mother have to sustain injury and harm during this experience? Why did the newborn have its cord around its neck? Is this the miracle of life? The first delivery during my obstetrics–gynecology rotation raised questions on life, suffering, and universal truths as the baby surfaced for its first breath. Innate curiosity.”

O’Shea, who’s spending his clinical years at the Sarasota Regional Campus, is the fourth student whose art has been displayed on Academic Medicine’s cover. The three others were Jared Rich (Class of ’12), Monica Chatwal (’13) and Zach Folzenlogen (also ’13).
 

     Nineteen students from the College of Medicine’s Class of 2015 have been elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, said Ricardo Gonzalez-Rothi, M.D., chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences and councilor to AOA’s Delta Chapter at FSU.
     To be eligible for election to AOA, students must be in the top 25th percentile of their class scholastically and must have demonstrated sufficient evidence of gifted teaching, of leadership in academia and the community, of support of the ideals of humanism and of promoting service to others.
     This is the list of newly elected students:

• Shawn Adams
• Ryan Berger
• Maureen Bruns
• Tyler Caton
• Tyler Cobb
• David Cristin
• Joshua Greenstein
• Brandon Lambiris
• Noona Leavell
• Juliana Matthews
• Laura McLaughlin
• Joanna Meadors
• Nathan Nowalk
• Crystal Pickeral
• Melanie Siefman
• Kristen Valencia
• Katherine Wright
• Zachary Zimmerman
• James Zorn

Two years ago, Ryan Berger — with the help of classmate Jesse O’Shea — created an app to help anyone on campus find the nearest automated external defibrillator in case of cardiac arrest. Now the two students from the Class of 2015 have written a paper about that app, and it’s being published. “AEDs at Your Fingertips: Automated External Defibrillators on College Campuses and a Novel Approach for Increasing Accessibility” has been accepted for publication in The Journal of American College Health.

The app — found under the “Places” heading in the free FSU Mobile app — can give you a list of every AED on Florida State’s campus, show you a picture of each site and even guide you step by step to the closest ones.

Berger is at the College of Medicine’s Fort Pierce Regional Campus. O’Shea is at the Sarasota Regional Campus. Nancy Clark, the college’s director of medical informatics, helped the students develop the app.
 

A paper produced by the research lab of Assistant Professor Jose Pinto, in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, is being published in the Aug. 15 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Its title is “Long Term Ablation of Protein Kinase A (PKA)-mediated Cardiac Troponin I Phosphorylation Leads to Excitation-Contraction Uncoupling and Diastolic Dysfunction in a Knock-in Mouse Model of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.”

Pinto’s co-authors are David Dweck, Marcos A. Sanchez-Gonzalez, Crystal-Dawn Badger, Andrew Koutnik, Edda Ruiz, Brittany Griffin, Professor Mohamed Kabbaj and Professor Michael Overton.
 

August 2014

The first-year students in the Class of 2018 have chosen these 18 officers to represent them:

• President: Mark Micolucci (son of Program in Medical Sciences alumnus Vic Micolucci).
• Vice president: Adam Jaffe.
• Secretary: Annie Cadavid (sister of Class of 2014 graduate Felipe Cadavid).
• Treasurer: Kelley Rojas.
• Year 1 & 2 Curriculum Committee representative: Shawn Hassani (brother of Class of 2015 member Brian Hassani).
• Curriculum Committee representative: Michael Alexander.
• Council on Diversity & Inclusion representative: Nick Karr.
• Social co-chairs: Bruce Ferraro, Travis Thompson.
• Historian chair: Simon Lopez.
• Hospitality co-chairs: Corey Cavannaugh, Amanda Trippensee.
• Gala chair: Cilla Edmonston.
• Community outreach co-chairs: Arnold Abud, Drew Williams.
• Intramural co-chairs: Nina Morgan, Ariella Price.
• IT/Library Committee representative: Boris Faynberg.