In recognition of Researcher Appreciation Day, the Recognitions Committee at Emory School of Medicine sent out a call for nominations for researchers across the school who are making a difference in their field. Emory researchers were nominated by their peers and colleagues for their groundbreaking research, development of new technologies, and continued pursuit of novel and innovative ideas.
Read more about the amazing research happening at Emory and join us in congratulating the Department of Medicine researchers below.
Evan Anderson
Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases
Research Focus: Evan has been working day and night to combat the COVID-19 pandemic by rapidly scaling up clinical trials of vaccine candidates within the VTEU. The progress he and his colleagues have made in such a short time is highly worthy of recognition.
Sara Auld
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Tuberculosis and HIV
Sara Auld is conducting groundbreaking research spanning public health and epidemiology to global health and laboratory sciences. Her project studies HIV and TB in Kenya and Atlanta to examine how HIV infection impacts the response to TB exposure and ultimately to produce new interventions to decrease the risk of TB infection and improve long-term outcomes for people with HIV. Particularly during COVID-19, she has been forced to suspend a considerable amount of her research project and instead she has developed and led a collaborative COVID-19 research team, the Quality and Clinical Research Collaborative (QCRC), that has published several seminal manuscripts while also caring for patients and selflessly providing protected time to her colleagues for their work.
Alexis Bender
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Aging, co-occurring mental and physical health conditions
Alexis Bender’s research examines the psychosocial aspects of aging with co-occurring mental (e.g., substance use disorders) and physical health (e.g., HIV) conditions to improve the quality of life and care for vulnerable populations. Her contributions and potential for leadership in this area were recognized as one of four national scholars selected for the 2019-2022 NIMH-Funded Sustained Training in HIV and Aging Research program. In addition to her ongoing collaborations with Gerontology faculty, she is a PI on a newly funded Emory Center for AIDS Research R03 examining integrated substance use and HIV care in clinics across Georgia.
Annette Esper
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Critical care / ARDS
Annette Esper has used her expertise in sepsis and ARDS to pivot into new collaborative research with infectious diseases and bioinformatics and metabolomics to develop broad-based predictive algorithms that utilize both clinical and biological data to predict disease events and therapeutic responses in patients with COVID-19.
Frances Eun-Hyung Lee
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: B-cell/plasma cell biology
Frances Eun-Hyung Lee has developed innovative and unique protocols and pipelines for single cell evaluation of the transcriptomics and repertoire analysis of human antibody secreting cell subsets in the blood, respiratory mucosa, and other tissue compartments, which she is currently applying towards novel diagnostics and potential risk stratification in COVID-19.
Roberto Pacifici
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Osteoimmunology
Roberto Pacifici has made seminal contributions to elucidating the role of the immune response and of gut microbiota in estrogen deficiency bone loss and in hyperparathyroidism, and in the bone anabolic actions of parathyroid hormone. In the process, he co-founded the fields of osteoimmunology and osteomicrobiology.
Shreya Raja
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Fecal Incontinence and Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Shreya Raja’s research focuses on the role of gut microbiota in the pathophysiology of gastrointestinal diseases like Fecal incontinence and Irritable Bowel syndrome. Using innovative methods like human fecal transplant into germ free mice, she hopes to understand the underlying pathophysiology and develop new treatments for these diseases.
Raja’s research is advancing the field because fecal incontinence is a poorly understood, debilitating condition which severely impairs quality of life, and it is highly prevalent particularly in veterans. Treatment options are limited for this disorder. The goal of the research is to identify a novel mechanism that is microbiota-related and can be used to develop new and more effective treatment options.
Nadine Rouphael
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Immunology
Nadine Rouphael has been a pioneer in bringing new studies, getting the team together, and advancing the science of vaccine research and immunology. She leads the COVID-19 vaccine trials at Emory.
Aaron Trammell
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Pulmonary hypertension
Aaron Trammell’s research focuses on secondary pulmonary hypertension related to chronic lung disease and left heart disease, a large portion of the pulmonary hypertension disease burden. His work is focused on identifying risk factors which influence outcome as well as investigating the interaction between metabolism and pulmonary hypertension.
Antoine Trammell
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias (ADRD)
Antoine Trammell has a grant exploring cognitive resilience in African Americans of advanced age. He is passionate about improving health through community engagement. Trammell works with community organizations and churches dedicated to the health of minority populations. His work includes service on the Center for Black Women’s Wellness Board.
Ann Vandenberg
Department of Medicine
Research Focus: Health services research in aging
Ann Vandenberg’s research examines how providers and patients, particularly frail older adults, can work together for better health care delivery. Her health services research incorporates valuable patient viewpoints to suggest healthcare solutions that work for them; it encompasses shared decision making, medication safety, and technology use. This research focus is especially important in this time of a pandemic, which has so acutely affected older adults.
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