April 2014

The Weill Cornell CTSC Has Dropped Its First Official Rap Single!
The Weill Cornell CTSC has entered a video competition to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the NIH Common Fund. The Video Contest site has now gone live and we need your help to win and to continue CTSC NIH funding! 

You can vote for our submission by following the link below, and clicking “Like’ in the lower left corner (directly below the NIH logo). Voting will remain open until May 9 and all ‘Likes’ (votes) are tallied via YouTube’s ‘Like’ function.   

Clinical and Translational Education Program (CTEP) team member Tim Baker wrote and performed a fun, terrific rap that captures the amazing work we are doing and expresses our gratitude to the Common Fund for its support. You may see some familiar faces of your CTSC colleagues in the video! 

The video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k60ZaoafjOY.

You can help in two ways:
1) Please watch the video and like it on YouTube, by clicking the “thumbs up” button on the website. You may need sign into your gmail or youtube account or to register an account to vote. 
2) Please share the link with your own team and networks and ask them to share the link with their networks.

Some general information:  

• The winning videos will be the 4–5 videos that receive the most “Likes” on YouTube.
• The NIH expects to count “Likes” until May 9, 2014, to determine the winners.  This is subject to change. 
• Winners will receive a signed certificate from Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director, and will see their video shown during the Common Fund 10-Year Commemoration Symposium on June 19th via live videocast.

 
Thank you for your help with “getting the word out” before May 9, 2014!

CTEP Trainee Chosen as 2014 Associate Scientific Advisor to Science Translational Medicine
Every year, the online journal Science Translational Medicine chooses a select group of early-career translational scientists to serve as Associate Scientific Advisors. This year, another trainee of the CTSC’s Clinical and Translational Education Program (CTEP) has won this distinction: Bishoy M. Faltas, MD (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center [MSKCC] Clinical Research Methodology Trainee; Clinical Fellow, Division of Hematology/Medical Oncology; and Research Fellow, Institute of Precision Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College) and will join an international cohort of 27 other advisors for 2014. Please read more about Bishoy's distinction on the CTSC Blog.
 
Acting as advisors to the journal, these scientists will scan the literature weekly, selecting and summarizing research papers to be highlighted in the journal’s Editors' Choice section. Each Associate Advisor will have approximately eight of their articles appear in Science Translational Medicine over the next year.

CTSC Travel Award Recipients Announced
Congratulations to the following CTEP students for receiving a CTSC Travel Award to present their abstracts at the Translational Science Annual Meeting in Washington, DC on April 9-11, 2014:

• Ajay Gupta, MD:  Assistant Professor with the Department of Radiology at WCMC - Advanced Certificate Program, “Can Carotid Plaque Thickness Measurements Predict Symptomatic Disease in High Grade Carotid Artery Stenosis?,”
• Wendy Vargas, MD: Instructor with the Department of Neurology at WCMC – Advanced Certificate Program, “Longitudinal Change in Myelin Water Fraction in New Multiple Sclerosis Lesions,”
• Yen Hsun (Ernie) Chen, BSc: Medical Student in the Department of Orthopedics at WCMC – TL1 Trainee, “Simvastatin-Containing Micelles for Improving Fracture Repair,”
• Mathias Sanchez, MD: Hematology Fellow with the Department of Medicine at MSKCC – CRMC Student, “Donor WT-1 Sensitized Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes for Patients With Myelofibrosis Undergoing Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation,”
• Samir Patel, BS: Medical Student with the Department of Neurological Surgery at WCMC – Summer Intensive Fellowship for Medical Students, “Influence of Fluorescein Angiography on the Diagnosis of Zone in Retinopathy of Prematurity.” Michael A Klufas, MD, presented on behalf of Mr. Patel.

CTSC Summer Intensive Fellowship for Medical Students (SIFMS) Recipients Announced
We are pleased to announce this year's CTSC Summer Intensive Clinical/Translational Research Fellows. The CTSC Summer Fellowship is an 8-week continuous program that provides medical students with an introduction to basic, translational or clinical research.  

• Abimbola Ayangbesan, BA, research project title, "89Zr-Df-IAB2M Imaging of Localized Prostate Cancer"
• Gary Kocharian, BA, research project title, "Extra Operative Externalized Ventricular Drain Placement: A Prospective Study of Efficacy"
• Beiyi Shen, PhD, research project title, "Role of exosomes within tumor microenvironment during glioma progression"
• Ramya Tadipatri, BS, research project title, "Development of a Novel CAR Construct for T Cell Immunotherapy in Leukemia Patients"
• Achmed Turay, BS, research project title, "Targeting the glioma stem cell microenvironment through blood-brain barrier disruption"
• Bella Vishnevsky, BA, BS, research project title, "Truncation of Suture Associated Inflammatory Response by Novel, Synthetic Pseudo"

Nathaniel Hupert is Recipient of the CDC's Director's Recognition Award
Nathaniel Hupert, CTEP Course Director and mentor to CTSC KL2 scholar, Michael Satlin, and Summer Fellow, Colin Raelson, received an award in recognition of his Health Economics Modeling Unit participation which focused on H7N9 treatment and prevention. Read more here. 

Inmaculada de Melo-Martin Virginia Tech Science & Technology in Society Seminar Series Speaker
CTEP Course Director and professor in healthcare policy, Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, gave her lecture, "Valuing our Children: Embryo Selection and Procreative Liberty," at the Virginia Tech Science & Technology in Society Seminar Series. Read more here.