YSM News and Recognition

Steven Schiff, MD, PhD, has been selected to lead the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Fogarty International Center and serve as the NIH associate director for international research. Schiff began his directorship on June 4, stepping down from his position as professor of neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine. The center supports and facilitates global health research and builds partnerships between United States health research institutions and their counterparts abroad. For the past 20 years, Schiff, a pediatric neurosurgeon, has worked with partners in Uganda to first identify and then characterize a strain of bacteria that causes serious illness and often death in children. Through that research, Schiff and his colleagues uncovered environmental drivers of infection risk and established infection-tracking infrastructure.

Richard Carson, PhD, was awarded the Paul C. Aebersold Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Nuclear Medicine Science at the annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. Carson is a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and of biomedical engineering. His work has contributed to significant advances in the understanding and application of nuclear medicine, specifically in the field of neuroscience and neuropsychiatric disorders. He has focused on the development and application of mathematical techniques for positron emission tomography (PET), including such innovations as image reconstruction, tracer kinetic modeling, novel tracer design including for synaptic density imaging, and novel brain-PET instrumentation (the NeuroEXPLORER). He was director of the Yale PET Center from 2007 to 2022.

Nitya Bakshi, MBBS, MS, associate professor of pediatrics, received an R01 grant in May to investigate mechanisms and biomarkers of chronic pain in sickle cell disease. Bakshi is also director of the Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease Program in the Section on Pediatric Hematology & Oncology. The title of her project is “Patient-centered endpoints, novel biomarkers, and long-term outcomes of high impact chronic pain in sickle cell disease: Sickle Pain Related Impact (SPiRIt-2) Study.”

Amanda Bentley-DeSousa, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Cell Biology (lab of Shawn Ferguson, PhD), has been named to the inaugural cohort of Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Collaborative Research Network Discovery Fellows. The competitive fellowship recognizes promising postdoctoral researchers pursuing innovative Parkinson’s disease research and provides mentorship, collaborative training, and career development support to help fellows advance toward independent research careers. Bentley-DeSousa’s project will investigate how a major enzyme linked to Parkinson’s disease contributes to the damage of cellular compartments that help clear waste and maintain cell health.

Hospital resident Stephanie Carter, MD (left), and MD-PhD student Elena Wilson were honored at the 2026 Association for Surgical Education (ASE) conference in Atlanta. Carter received the ASE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee Award and Scholarship for her contributions to surgical education. Wilson received the Promising Medical Student Surgery Education Research Award for her work on a multispecialty rotation pilot.

Hyunghoon Cho, PhD (left), and Haoyu Cheng, PhD, both assistant professors in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science, have received a U01 award from the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health totaling approximately $1.97 million. The award will fund the project "Computational Tools for Population-Scale Assembly and Genotyping with Pangenomes," which aims to develop scalable computational methods for population-scale human pangenome assembly and analysis. The work integrates advances in genome assembly, genotyping of complex genomic regions, and privacy-enhancing technologies. The goal is to support secure joint analysis of genomic data across institutions and improve the study of clinically important, highly variable regions of the human genome.

Under the leadership of Terri Fried, MD, Humana Foundation Professor of Medicine (Geriatrics), the T32 Postdoctoral Training Program in Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology and Aging-related Research has been renewed for support by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) through 2031. For more than 25 years, this training program has been a major support structure for postdoctoral research training in aging at Yale School of Medicine and has helped to develop the careers of many contemporary leaders in geriatrics and aging research. Learn more about the program.

Brendan O’Brien, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in cardiovascular medicine, was chosen as the winner of the Shobha Ghosh Investigator in Training Award at the American Heart Association (AHA) Vascular Discovery Conference “Vascular Discovery: From Genes to Medicine.” At the meeting, four finalists gave podium presentations, and were evaluated based on the scientific merit, quality, originality of the research, their presentation, and their CVs. The award is presented to talented early career investigators in training in arteriosclerosis, thrombosis and vascular biology, as well as peripheral vascular disease.

Four Yale School of Medicine trainees received Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Awards at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting. The awards are given to promising young physicians during the final years of training to support their transition to faculty appointments and to encourage quality research in clinical oncology. The Yale recipients and their area of study are: Krishna Iyer, MD, PhD: Targeting the CXCL8-BCL2A1 Axis in Tumor-Associated Neutrophils to Overcome Adaptive Immune Suppression in Colorectal Cancer; Caroline Richburg, MD: Evaluating the Impact of Sociobehavioral Comorbidities and Resource Referral on Surgical Outcomes in Veterans With Cancer; Rajal Sharmat, MD, PhD: Investigating Epigenetic Loss of MHC II as a Resistance Mechanism in NSCLC; and Paul Stockhammer, MD, PhD: Determinants of Clinical Outcomes and Therapeutic Sensitivity in ERBB2-mutant Lung Cancer.

As it has each spring for over a decade, the Yale Pediatric Diabetes Program held an “Adulting with Diabetes Day” on May 19. The annual event helps graduating high school seniors with diabetes, as well as their parents, prepare for the next steps on their journey while navigating life with a complex chronic condition. The team behind this year’s successful event included Kate Weyman, APRN, clinical instructor in nursing; Eileen Tichy, PA, physician associate in pediatrics; Paulina Rose, health educator; Daniella Carr, staff affiliate at Yale New Haven Hospital; and Abby Flynn, postgraduate associate in pediatrics.

Lisa Zhang, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine and assistant director of Medical Student Simulation at the Yale Center for Healthcare Simulation (YCHS), won the MedEd Innovation Showcase at the recent meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). In her presentation, Zhang described a collaboration on AI feedback of conversations led by YCHS with support from the Educational Technology and Innovation team.