Tom Scalea and Jerry Strauss

Every year, the medical school honors two alumni for their outstanding achievements during Reunion Weekend. This year, Dean of Medicine Jerry Strauss, M.D., Ph.D., bestowed the awards at the Grand Opening Gala of the McGlothlin Medical Education Center.

“As we mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of our medical school, the support of our alumni has never been more important,” Strauss said, noting how fitting it was to celebrate the school’s alumni in this milestone year. “ It is our alumni and their accomplishments, after all, that have advanced the School of Medicine’s reputation.”

David Whitehead and Jerry Strauss

This year, the Class of 1978′s Tom Scalea was named Outstanding Medical Alumnus. For more than 15 years, he has served as physician-in-chief of the University of Maryland’s R Adams Crowley Shock Trauma Center. In this role, he oversees the nation’s first and only integrated trauma hospital. In addition to working with the Air Force to provide essential care to wounded troops, Dr. Scalea has also traveled internationally with his team to Haiti and China to offer help in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes.

The Caravati Service Award went to the Class of 1973′s David Whitehead who also completed his family medicine training on the MCV Campus. He went on to establish his own family practice office with a fellow 1973 classmate and served the community of Harrisonburg for 30 years. After retirement, Dr. Whitehead returned to Richmond and has contributed to the success of the medical school through his work on the Admissions Committee, as an assistant clinical professor of family medicine and as a member of the Continuing Medical Education Committee.

Kurt F. Hauser, Ph.D.

Kurt F. Hauser, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and toxicology, accepted the Wybran Award from the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology at its 19th Scientific Conference on April 6 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Wybran Award is the highest honor bestowed by SNIP in recognition of the very best scientific contributions that have resulted in the preservation and expansion of the field of neuroimmune pharmacology.

The award carries the name of Joe Wybran, a renowned scientist whose work integrated the fields of neuroimmunology, drugs of abuse and immunity to infection. He was killed in 1989, and afterward the award was created to memorialize his scientific prestige in the field and serve as a remembrance of his contributions that underpin SNIP.

Leah Bush, M.D., has announced that she will step down from her position as Virginia’s Chief Medical Examiner as well as from the responsibilities of the chair of the Legal Medicine Department in the VCU School of Medicine.

In an announcement to the medical school’s faculty, Dean of Medicine Jerry Strauss III, M.D., Ph.D., commended Bush for her work as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s CME, a position she has held since 2008, during which she also served as Chair of Legal Medicine. Prior to her appointment as CME, Bush served for more than 18 years as Deputy Chief ME in the Tidewater District.

“I know that she felt it was her duty to speak on behalf of victims of crime,” Strauss said. “It was a responsibility that she carried with skill, energy and compassion. I am profoundly grateful that she also felt it her duty to support our educational programs. Perhaps that commitment had its start in her own medical training.” Bush earned her medical degree from the VCU School of Medicine in 1984 and stayed on the MCV Campus to complete residency training in pathology and legal medicine. She also earned a master’s degree in biology from the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.

Her tenure as chair and chief will end immediately, as she has pressing family responsibilities that require her attention. Bush will transition to the role of an Assistant Chief Medical Examiner for the Central District Office until her planned retirement in 2014. William Gormley, M.D., Ph.D., will take over as Acting Chief Medical Examiner while the Virginia Department of Health recruits Bush’s successor.

“I am grateful that Dr. Bush has agreed to stay on with the medical school in an adjunct faculty position and has offered her consultation and support to our school in her new role as Assistant Chief ME,” Strauss said. “Please join me in thanking her for her service to our school and to the Commonwealth and in wishing her well.”

From the sound of a Cardinal welcoming spring with a gentle melody to the unforgettable shriek of the Amazonian jungle’s Screaming Piha, birds and their songs are a source of mystery and magic for millions of Americans.

Bird watching is such a popular pastime around the world that an entire website — www.xeno-canto.org — is dedicated to sharing the recordings of bird songs and sounds captured by casual birders and dedicated ornithologists alike.

Darrell L. Peterson, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was the first to record and share the sound of the elusive Swainson’s Warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii). Uploaded to Xeno-Canto in 2002, his file includes a sonogram as well as a sound recording of this nearly undetected North American bird.

“They’re sneaky,” says Peterson, who has been a bird enthusiast since 1966. “The Great Dismal Swamp is one of the greatest places in the United States to see one and I’ve taken people from all over the world there.”

Peterson credits his youth in Lexington, Mo., for his interest in biology. “I spent my formative years with my grandparents on a farm. Outdoor stuff is what you did back then — you played outside.”

As a biologist, he considers himself a “lab person” but he says an interest in fieldwork has always been with him. “I’ve always liked biology in general, but to tell you the truth, what triggered the bird thing, I guess, is that they’re relatively easy to see unlike fish where you have to go underwater. Reptiles are kind of sneaky, but everybody can see birds.”

In October 2012 Peterson was recognized with VCU’s Billy R. Martin Award for Innovation, for inventing a test for equine infectious anemia (EIA) that delivers rapid results for the contagious disease, which is caused by a virus similar to HIV in humans and for which there is no treatment.

“Receiving an award named after Billy Martin, and thereby being in some way compared to him, is a great compliment,” Peterson said. Martin, who died in 2008, was the former chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the School of Medicine.

Peterson’s research interests are in the structure and function of viral proteins with current major emphasis on proteins of the hepatitis B virus, several retroviruses and influenza viruses.

Combining personal interests with professional work may be a dream for some, but for Peterson, the two are a natural fit.

“I work on hepatitis viruses and we’re using some bird proteins for vaccine development,” he said. “Sera from birds is used to screen for hepatitis viruses. Say, if I wanted to go to Iceland, I could screen samples from colonial nesting birds or eggs from their colonies and possibly find some useful bird hepatitis viruses for our research.”

Peterson’s travels have taken him all over the world to capture the songs of birds. “I started recording them in the early 1970s. Back then I used a reel-to-reel tape recorder with a parabolic microphone shaped like a satellite dish, then I went to minidisk recordings.”

Today’s digital devices make it easy to move around, edit and store large amounts of recordings, he explains. And with 450 species of birds in Virginia alone, Peterson needs plenty of space for his recordings and notes.

Peterson draws a clear correlation between his hobby and profession. “Research is about identifying things and collecting data,” he says. The same can be said of traveling the world in search of a sneaky songbird.

Priscilla Mpasi

The Class of 2014’s Priscilla Mpasi has been elected as national vice-president of the Student National Medical Association. She will serve a one-year term during the 2013-2014 academic year.

The SNMA held the national election for its officers at the annual conference in Louisville, Ky., on March 31. Priscilla was one of three candidates vying for the post of national VP.

“After three long, grueling days of speeches and Q&A sessions, my name was called,” Priscilla said. “I actually won. I am still in shock and I have not had much time to process as I had to come right back to my surgery rotation and focus on being a medical student. I am so excited and honored to represent our institution in this way on the national level.”

The SNMA is the oldest and largest student-run organization focused on the needs and concerns of medical students of color. Priscilla has served as president of the VCU School of Medicine’s chapter during the 2011‐2012 school year and as a regional officer with the national organization this year.

Priscilla will work alongside the national president to execute the national agenda in its commemoration year entitled “50 years: Diversifying the Face of Medicine.” As vice-president she will serve as an executive member on the board of directors, directly oversee all the national committee programs and initiatives and attend regional and national conferences to speak out on health disparities and the importance of equality in healthcare access.

Priscilla is the first nationally elected executive officer in SNMA from VCU. In 2003-2004, two faculty members were appointed national committee officers: Sala S. Webb, M.D., assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, and Veronica Ayala-Sims, M.D., assistant professor of infectious diseases.

The Class of 2016’s Abrahm Behnam has married his design skills with medical knowledge to produce 68 illustrations in the recently released text Ultrasound-Guided Chemodenervation and Neurolysis: Reference Manual and DVD Procedure Atlas.

Abrahm Behnam, Class of 2016

Before entering medical school, Abrahm was a biomechanics research engineer at the National Institutes of Health. “I spent off-hours shadowing the medical director of my section during her clinical rounds.”

His director, Katharine Alter, M.D., is a pioneer in using ultrasound to guide chemodenervation procedures. Chemodenervation uses neurotoxins to paralyze a muscle or group of muscles to treat patients with hypertonia, movement disorders and a variety of other conditions. Alter had a medical teaching atlas underway to introduce the procedures for clinicians, and Abrahm offered his help in capturing basic patient photography and videos to illustrate the concepts.

As Abrahm began the project, he learned that three types of images would be featured: clinical, anatomical and ultrasound. All related to one another but demonstrated different perspectives on the procedure. Abrahm suggested it would be helpful to combine the images to highlight the anatomical obstacles involved with deep injections. The authors welcomed his suggestion and devoted a 70-page chapter to his illustrations.

Abrahm’s illustration of an ultrasound-guided injection in the neck is featured on the text’s cover.
Used with permission: Alter, K.A., Hallett, M., Karp, B., & Lungu, C. (2012). Ultrasound-Guided Chemodenervation and Neurolysis: Reference Manual and DVD Procedure Atlas. New York, NY: Demos Medical Publishing, LLC.

“The combined image includes a clinical photograph with anatomical illustrations superimposed specific to the photograph’s perspective and to bony landmarks of the patient’s anatomy,” Abrahm explains. “Each photo-illustration has a series of anatomical illustration layers that can be peeled off layer-by-layer to view deeper anatomy.”

Abrahm’s chapter, Muscle Layers and Injection Points Atlas, provides detailed pictorial reference of eight areas of the body from the side of the face to the lower leg. The illustrations guide clinicians in planning and performing chemodenervation procedures by showing the relationship and orientation of individual muscles and surface anatomy to help identify optimal injection sites. Clinicians can interactively scroll through muscle layers using an accompanying DVD featuring 68 animations that the editors have described as a stunning visual roadmap.

“When planning chemodenervation procedures many practitioners find visualizing complex 3 D musculoskeletal anatomy challenging,” said Alter, who is medical director of the Functional and Applied Biomechanics Section of the Rehabilitation Medicine Department at the NIH. “Abrahm’s images provide clinicians with a user friendly pictorial reference guide of the relevant musculoskeletal anatomy. It reveals details about the orientation of and overlapping nature of target muscles. In the short time that the text has been in print we have received a lot of positive feedback about this section of the atlas from clinicians.”
As a self-taught graphic designer, Abrahm’s previous experience was limited to creating logos and t-shirts for various clubs and societies. He now hopes to keep his newly discovered skill alive by working on more medical illustration projects.