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Appointments, Honors & Awards Vasan Ramachandran Named Visiting Professor at Prestigious Charité Hospital, Berlin Institute of Health Vasan Ramachandran, MD, professor of medicine and principal investigator and director of the renowned Framingham Heart Study, has been named a visiting professor at the Charité Hospital and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH). The position is funded through Stiftung Charité, an independent charitable foundation. As part of this two-year commitment, Dr. Ramachandran will serve as a consultant/advisor for a cardiovascular research project, The Berlin Long-term Observation of Vascular Events (BeLOVE) cohort, the goal of which is to characterize the epidemiology of chronic heart, brain, and kidney disease and learn how best to impact the clinical course of these diseases after an acute event. As a member of the project’s scientific advisory board, Dr. Ramachandran hopes to build upon and strengthen this overseas collaboration. For more than 25 years, Dr. Ramachandran has focused his research on the genetic and nongenetic epidemiology of heart failure; population-based vascular testing and cardiac ultrasound imaging; genetic and nongenetic epidemiology of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and novel biomarkers including genomic, metabolomic, and proteomic measures; as well as CVD risk estimation in the short-, medium- and long-term, including molecular markers and subclinical disease. Dr. Ramachandran also is the principal investigator of the RURAL (Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal) cohort study and a professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. He is the Jay & Louis Coffman Professor of Vascular Medicine and chief of the section of preventive medicine and epidemiology in the department of medicine. 10
Boston University School of Medicine
He has received the Outstanding Mentor awards from the department of medicine, BUSM and the American Heart Association (AHA) Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, and the prestigious AHA Population Science Award in 2014. BIH visiting professors are leading scientists in their specific fields within the life and medical sciences in the public or private sector who travel to Berlin for temporary activities at BIH and its partners, Charité Hospital and the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine. One of the largest university hospitals in Europe and internationally renowned for its excellence in teaching and training, Charité proudly lays claim to more than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in physiology and medicine, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch, and Paul Ehrlich. Stiftung Charité was endowed in 2005 by entrepreneur Johanna Quandt, who entrusted it with the mission of supporting the innovative potential and excellence of Berlin’s university medicine, a rich tradition in medical research and patient care. Stiftung Charité supports BIH visiting professors with funds from its Private Excellence Initiative Johanna Quandt. n Jessica Petrick Receives Peter Paul Career Development Professorship Assistant Professor of Medicine Jessica Petrick, PhD, MPH, has been selected as the recipient of this year’s Peter Paul Career Development Professorship. Dr. Petrick is an epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center whose research as part of the Black Women’s Health Study focuses on gastrointestinal cancers—including colorectal, liver, and esophageal—and on the nutritional and molecular factors that may contribute to racial disparities along the cancer continuum. She received her doctorate in
epidemiology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her master’s in epidemiology and health policy and bachelor’s degree from Case Western Reserve University. She completed her postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health. Made possible through the generous support of BU Trustee Peter Paul, the Peter Paul Career Development Professorship is presented to promising junior faculty who have been at BU for less than two years and who have held no prior professorships. n Anand Devaiah Delivers Conley Lecture on Medical Ethics at AAOHNS Annual Meeting Anand K. Devaiah, MD, associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery, was invited to give this year’s John Conley, MD, Lecture on Medical Ethics at the American Academy of OtolaryngologyHead and Neck Surgery (AAOHNS) annual meeting. The prestigious lecture is based on Dr. Conley’s passion for head and neck surgery and his dedication to the highest standard of ethical behavior from physicians. Dr. Devaiah also serves as director of the Biomedical & Health Technology Development & Transfer Domain at the Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy at Boston University. His experience in healthcare technology and innovation spans technology development, evaluation, implementation, research, administration, regulatory science, and intersections with social determinants of health. His virtual lecture, “Shifting Action and Innovation Mindsets to Embrace Social Determinants of Health—Ethical and Practical Considerations for All,” addressed various social determinants of health, including education, economic stability, and physical environment. “These have certainly been important prior to 2020, but we have faced unprec-
