Accolades

Mazure honored for her influence on women's health research

Sex and gender are among the most important variables in understanding biology and behavior, and yet women were generally not included in clinical research trials until recent years, notes Professor Carolyn M. Mazure, Ph.D., who was honored in October for her efforts to change all that. On October 29 in a ceremony in Hartford, Mazure was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, both in recognition of her vision in founding the Women's Health Research at Yale (WHRY) program and in honor of the influence she has had on biomedical research and health care.

Mazure created the WHRY program in 1998 based on the premise that understanding gender differences is vitally important to the health of both women and men. The interdisciplinary program is dedicated to exploring the wide range of conditions that are more prevalent in women or for which the causes, treatment, and prevention have gender-specific differences.

The program, which Mazure began with a grant from The Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation of West Hartford, has grown to become a national model for fostering interdisciplinary research on women's health and disseminating findings with real-world benefits to the community. Mazure, an internationally recognized researcher, is professor of psychiatry and psychology and associate dean for faculty affairs at the School of Medicine.

MS expert named chair of neurology

David A. Hafler, M.D., a leader in multiple sclerosis (MS) research, was named chair of neurology at the School of Medicine and chief of neurology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, effective September 1. An expert on the mechanisms of autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system, Hafler was director of molecular immunology in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He was the Jack, Sadie, and David Breakstone Professor of Neurology (Neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School, and a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His recruitment complements ongoing research at Yale in neurology, genetics, and translational immunology. Hafler will build upon existing neurology research in such areas as spinal cord injury and repair, epilepsy, and neurodegeneration, and he will expand research in MS and in other areas of neurology and the clinical neurosciences. Hafler succeeds Stephen G. Waxman, M.D., Ph.D., the Bridget Marie Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Pharmacology, who has led the department since 1986 and will remain on the faculty and continue as director of the Center for Neuroscience & Regeneration/Neurorehabilitation Research.

Research deputy tapped to lead psychiatry

John H. Krystal, M.D. ’84, was named chair of the Department of Psychiatry, effective July 1. Krystal, the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Professor of Translational Research, will also serve as chief of psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is director of the Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism, and he also heads the Clinical Neuroscience Division of the Veterans Affairs National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Veterans Affairs Alcohol Research Center at Yale. Since 2000, he has served as the department’s deputy chair for research. Krystal is an internationally renowned expert on the neurobiology and treatment of schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, and PTSD. His work is distinguished by its emphasis on translational neuroscience, the effort to combine emerging brain imaging and molecular genetic technologies with psychopharmacology to better understand alterations in brain function associated with psychiatric disorders. His research on the glutamate system in the brain has led to new experimental treatments for several psychiatric disorders. Krystal succeeds William H. Sledge, M.D., who led the department as interim chair during the past year, and Benjamin S. Bunney, M.D., who served as chair for two decades until his retirement in 2008.

Resident is honored by neurosurgeons for brain tumor research

Jennifer A. Moliterno, M.D., a fifth-year neurosurgery resident specializing in the treatment of brain tumors, has received the Louise Eisenhardt Resident Travel Scholarship from Women in Neurosurgery, part of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. In an effort to obtain the skills necessary to successfully conduct clinical outcomes research, Moliterno completed coursework through Yale’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program. She then applied this knowledge in a neuro-oncology clinical research rotation at Weill-Cornell Medical College’s Department of Neurological Surgery. In addition to contributing to the numerous brain tumor clinical trials of the New York Brain Tumor Project, Moliterno worked in the laboratory of John A. Boockvar, M.D., on understanding the significance of phosphatases in glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and aggressive kind of brain tumor in humans. As a medical student at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, Moliterno wrote and illustrated Parker’s Brain Storm, a book for children with brain tumors that was published and distributed internationally by the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation and was recently reformatted into a short movie available online. The scholarship is named for Louise Eisenhardt, M.D., a neuropathologist who worked alongside Harvey W. Cushing, M.D., the “father of neurosurgery.” After Cushing’s move to Yale late in his career, Eisenhardt became curator of his brain tumor registry, now housed at Yale School of Medicine. Eisenhardt, who died in 1967, was one of the world’s leading experts on the diagnosis of brain tumors.

Click here for older items