We are pleased to announce this year’s ICTR Scholars. Two awardees will be participating in our Career Development program, devoting at least 75% of their effort to their mentored research and research training; both of these awardees will be participating in our Clinical Research Training Program, leading to the MSc in Clinical Research. Two other outstanding junior faculty will receive career support awards that provide flexible, individualized support for investigators engaged in clinical/translational research.   

Pictured at the right:

Patrik Brodin, PhD; Radiation Oncology. “Development of a risk-adaptive decision-support framework in radiation oncology as a unique tool for comparative effectiveness research studies in medicine.” Mentors: Drs. Chandan Guha and Wolfgang Tomé.

Claudene George, MD, RPh; Medicine (Geriatrics). “Clinical and neurobiological consequences of medication Use on mobility in aging.” Mentors: Drs. Joe Verghese and Roee Holtzer. 

Olga Aroniadis, MD, MSc; Medicine (Gastroenterology). "Fecal microbiota transplantation for diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome: clinical and microbiome response." Mentors: Drs. Allan Wolkoff and Larry Brandt.

Marcus Bachhuber, MD, MSHP; Medicine (General Internal Medicine). “Leveraging the electronic health record to reduce opioid analgesic prescriptions.” Mentors: Drs. Chinazo Cunningham and Moonseong Heo.

The Bronx Community Research Review Board (BxCRRB) established under the aegis of the ICTR’s Community Engagement program received a major independent grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), titled “Community Engaged Research Academy: Local Solutions for Local Concerns”. The Bronx Health Link will be receiving the funds and hiring staff to support their Community Engaged Research Academy, which will train 30 community research partners over the next two years.

Parsa Mirhaji, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Research Informatics, is leading the effort in partnering with Dr. Michelle Gong, Franz, Inc. and the Mayo Clinic to create a real-time semantic data platform with predictive analytics for clinical decision support, challenging the traditional care delivery process to use advanced patient data to better predict outcomes. The Semantic Data Lake pulls in over 68,000 patients across Montefiore and scores patient risk factors to alert clinicians of a possible need for ventilator support and/or ICU transfer . This system will go-live this summer, when clinicians will receive notifications through Epic. To learn more about this new technology, click here. 

The Journal of Clinical and Translational Science is now available as an open access journal through the D. Samuel Gottesman Library. This international peer-reviewed journal will publish papers based on research from T1 to T4 and highlight work in b asic translational research; clinical research; education; research methods; implementation, policy and community engagement; and translational research design and analysis. Two members of the Einstein-Montefiore ICTR, Aileen McGinn, PhD and Hal Strelnick, MD have been chosen as members of the Journal's editorial board. 

As a part of a national CTSA initiative, CTSA institutions take part in hosting "Our Community, Our Health" virtual town halls to facilitate communication between the researchers and community and share health research ideas and findings across the US.  The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will host a town hall focused on women's heart health on June 30th and the University of Florida will be hosting town hall event on July 19th on "The Emerging Role of the Nurse in Health Care". To live stream these events, click here.    

The final NIH policy on the Use of a Single Institutional Review Board for Multi-Site Research has just been released. This policy states that all sites participating in multi-site studies involving nonexempt human subjects research, funded by the NIH, will use a single IRB to conduct the ethical review required by the Department of Health and Human Services regulations for the Protection of Human Services. To read this policy, click here. A statement from NIH Director, Francis Collins can be found here.  

Einstein-Montefiore translational investigators continue to succeed in obtaining funding. Three of these investigators with recent grant awards are Marina Reznik, MD for her R01 titled, "Promoting Asthma Guidelines and Management through Technology-Based Intervention and Care Coordination (PRAGMATIC)", Andras Fiser, PhD for his R01 titled, "Molecular basis of receptor-ligand recognition in the Immunological Synapse", and Laurie Bauman, PhD for her R01, PC4PrEP: Integrating PrEP into Primary Care".