2025 HHRI Research Symposium | | | | |
A full house gathered on Friday, April 25, 2025, for Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute’s (HHRI) Research Symposium and Poster Session. This was a hybrid event, held in person and via TEAMS. The symposium kicked off with poster presentations and networking. It included a leadership update from Kirsten Johansen, MD, HHRI President.
The leadership update was followed by presentations from researchers who are focused on disease prevention and treatments and social determinants of health. Investigators Kristina Burrack, PhD, Rachel Nygaard, PhD, and Kate Diaz Vickery, MD, MSc, spoke on their current and ongoing research, as well as answering questions from both the in-person and online audience.
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Kristina Burrack, PhD, spoke about her ongoing research on malaria, the Plasmodium infection, and vaccination, and her recent voyage to Antarctica.
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Rachel Nygaard, PhD, discussed the impacts of frostbite during tissue freezing and unthawing, as well as the long-term impacts of frostbite, particularly among people experiencing homelessness.
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Dr. Kate Diaz Vickery, MD, MSc, delivered a presentation on how diabetes and homelessness are connected and D-HOMES, a diabetes wellness coaching program she designed with the community-engaged research team, Quroum.
| | | Mpls.StPaul Magazine's 2025 Rising Stars | | Please join us in congratulating the following HHRI physician-researchers who were named 2025 Mpls.St.Paul Magazine Rising Stars. You can see the full list of Hennepin Healthcare's Rising Stars here. | | |
Derek Lumbard, MD, FACS, is a surgeon-scientist specializing in trauma, critical care, and acute care surgery. Dr. Lumbard’s current research interests focus on improving care for the critically injured and understanding the underlying risk factors that contribute to gun violence and developing evidence-based interventions that prevent firearm injuries and deaths.
| | Kerry Sheets, MD, is a geriatrician providing care for older adults in the Hennepin Healthcare clinic and in nursing homes. She has particular interests in complex chronic disease management, dementia, HIV, and functional impairment. Dr. Sheets' research interests are in dementia and blood-based dementia biomarkers, healthy aging, and HIV and aging. | | | |
Featured: Hennepin Trauma Surgery Research
Hennepin Trauma Surgery Research is led by a frostbite and burn specialist, Rachel Nygaard, PhD, and a trauma and acute care surgeon-scientist, Derek Lumbard, MD. Their team tackles the underlying risk factors that contribute to preventable violent injuries and gun violence by developing evidence-based interventions that prevent firearm injuries and deaths through the hospital-based violence intervention program Next Step. Their work also includes research to improve outcomes following frostbite injury.
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Celebrating the Women in STEMM at HHRI | | Federal Research Funding Cuts Threaten Lifesaving Innovations | | |
Advancements in patient care will be severely disrupted if planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants go into effect. “I have never seen anything on this scale,” said HHRI President Kirsten Johansen, MD, in Minnesota Medicine (May/June 2025), the Journal of the Minnesota Medical Association. In the article, Dr. Johansen and others from Minnesota’s biomedical community discussed the devastating impact federal funding cuts would have on research and innovation.
It has been a difficult spring keeping up with the continuous changes in federal research funding and policies described in the Minnesota Medicine story. Through it all, HHRI researchers remain dedicated to their work in scientific discovery, investigating the causes of and potential treatments for diseases to improve the health of patients in our local community and around the world.
We thank you for your ongoing interest and support of the research being conducted at Hennepin Healthcare. As we navigate these disruptions together, we encourage you to act to protect the unparalleled resources that make up the US scientific enterprise. Information about how you can contact your congressional representatives to express your concerns can be found here. If these challenging times inspire your generosity, information about HHRI research programs currently under pressure can be found here. Your advocacy and support are greatly appreciated.
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