Celebrating faculty research excellence at the Dean’s Distinguished Research Lectureship

Medical School Blog published by: Sarah Hansen,  October 30, 2015

DDRL 2015 honoreesLeft to right: Demetri Yannopoulos, Brooks Jackson, Marc Jenkins. Photo by Rich Ryan 

In 2013 the annual Dean’s Distinguished Research Lectureship (DDRL) emerged as our premiere event to acknowledge faculty research excellence. It launched with the celebration of the Medical School’s 125th anniversary and continues today as an independent event to promote and honor a legacy of research achievement at the school.

The DDRL honors up to two outstanding faculty members who are selected to share their research stories which detail the state of the science when they entered the field, changes that emerged due to their work, and plans or predictions for the future of medicine and basic science research. The DDRL is hosted at a large scale in McNamara Alumni Center with all faculty, staff, graduate students, residents, fellows, and students all invited to attend.

At the third annual Dean’s Distinguished Research Lectureship on October 14, 2015, Marc Jenkins, PhD, and Demetri Yannopoulos, MD, were honored as lecturers.

Jenkins is a Distinguished McKnight Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and serves as director for the Center for Immunology. He delivered the talk “Tracking helper T cells during the immune response.”

Yannopoulos is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology. He also directs the Minnesota Resuscitation Consortium, which connects bystander, prehospital, and hospital initiatives to improve survival from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). He spoke on “A new era in resuscitation science.”

Each speaker charged the crowd with new ideas about their fields of study and the challenges and opportunities that face both emergency cardiac resuscitation and targeted immunologic treatments. View both presentations online in their entirety.

For the first time in 2015, the DDRL also included an induction ceremony for all faculty joining the Wall of Scholarship. Adding to the overall celebration of research excellence, the Wall of Scholarship is a great addition to the DDRL which will continue into the future.

The Wall honors current faculty whose first or last authored papers were cited over 1000 times according to two of three major citation indices. These faculty are acknowledged with a plaque and a golden reproduction of their paper to be hung on the Wall of Scholarship located on the second floor of the Phillips Wangensteen Building between the student lecture halls and the Bio-Medical Library.

12 faculty were honored in 2015 with new papers on the Wall of Scholarship:

Hanna Bloomfield, MD, PhD, Medicine
Jay Cohn, MD, Medicine's Division of Cardiology
Robert Foley, MD, Medicine's Renal Diseases and Hypertension
Gary Francis, MD, Medicine's Division of Cardiology
Thomas Griffith, PhD, Urology
Robert Hebbel, MD, Medicine's Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation
Stephen Hecht, PhD, Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
Alan Hirsch, MD, Medicine's Division of Cardiology
Jan Norrander, PhD, Genetics, Cell Biology and Development
Jose Pardo, MD, PHD, Psychiatry
Peter Southern, PhD, Microbiology and Immunology
Kamil Ugurbil, PhD, Radiology

Following both the DDRL presentations and Wall of Scholarship ceremony, guests enjoyed complimentary drinks and hors d'oeuvres while perusing research posters by current medical students. Nearly 30 posters were on display for the first Medical Student Research Fair, representing work in public health, clinical work, and basic science research. Students were available to discuss their projects with faculty and came from both the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses to participate in the event.

The DDRL continues to grow and evolve to include and promote work from Medical School researchers at all levels of their career. It’s the only ongoing event at our school that is designed for the entire community to come together around the topic of research, and it aims to be a fun and informal event that encourages conversation and engagement across disciplines and departments.

View more photographs from the DDRL on Flickr.