"I am sure that at medical school graduations across the country, students are being reminded of exciting advances and the rapid pace of change. Less obvious, but equally important, is the concept that these advances are bringing new responsibilities for you, responsibilities to ensure that the benefits that accrue from these advances fall fairly upon those in need," Siliciano said to graduates.

 

The ceremony also included remarks from student speakers Catherine Colaianni, M.D. and Alexis Norris, Ph.D.

 

"The most exciting thing to me about our graduation today is that we are now officially a part of the profession and the conversation, and because we have a part, we have a voice and a responsibility towards shaping its future. I'm sure we're going to shape its future in a lot of different ways," said Colaianni, who will do her otolaryngology residency at Harvard Medical School in the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary next year.

 

"We've all made it here to graduation. We've pushed through those negative results, those negative thoughts and eventually it paid off. The experiment or analysis finally worked. The paper was accepted, and the thesis was submitted," said Norris, who obtained her Ph.D. from the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. She will start a postdoctoral research fellowship with a joint appointment in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins and in the Department of Neurology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

 

Thirty-two student awards were given, as well as 13 teaching awards, including seven from the newly formed Johns Hopkins Institute for Educational Excellence.