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Richard “Dick” P. Wenzel, M.D., professor and former chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine, received the International Federation of Infection Control’s 2014 Martin S. Favero Award. Presented at the 2014 IFIC Conference in Malta, the award recognizes the lifetime achievements of individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of infection prevention and control worldwide. Wenzel’s work includes significant contributions on the epidemiology of hospital-acquired infections, especially bloodstream infections and sepsis.
Peyton Rowe, associate professor of advertising in the College of Humanities and Sciences, received $25,000 from the VCU Quest Innovation Fund to support capacity building for the nonprofit organization CreateAthon. Out of 68 applicants, Rowe was awarded the grant to strengthen CreateAthon’s partnership with VCU and encourage communitywide collaboration.
Katherine Nash, assistant professor in the Department of English, has written a new book. “Feminist Narrative Ethics: Tacit Persuasion in Modernist Form” examines rhetorical techniques that encourage readers to rethink their beliefs regarding women’s rights and ethics.
Karen Kester, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biology, and Jennifer Stewart, Ph.D., director of graduate studies in the biology department, were awarded a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to help increase transfer and graduation rates of community college students interested in biology and to ultimately increase the number of students from underrepresented groups who pursue careers in biomedical and behavioral research careers.
Rebecca Heise, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, received a $400,000 National Science Foundation CAREER grant award. Her proposed research for the award aims to understand how mechanical forces within the lungs can cause epithelial cell injury that leads to pulmonary fibrosis, or scar tissue formation, within the lung.
Amanda Dickinson, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biology, received a $700,000 National Science Foundation CAREER grant award for her research on “Pulling the Mouth Open: Coordinating orofacial tissue growth and epithelial integrity to form the embryonic mouth.”
Claire Bourne, assistant professor in the Department of English, was awarded a Charlton B. Hinman fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., for the 2014-15 academic year. She will spend the year working on her book-in-progress, “Set Forth As It Hath Been Played: Printing the Performance in Early Modern England.” Bourne also received the 2014 J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize, presented by the Shakespeare Association of America, for her doctoral thesis, “A Play and No Play: Printing the Performance in Early Modern England.”
Melissa Lesh (B.F.A. ’13/A) was awarded first place in the inaugural RVA Environmental Film Festival Local Documentary Contest. “James River Sturgeon” focuses on VCU research and was shot at the Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences. The film follows Matt Balazik, Ph.D. (B.S. ’05/HS&; M.S. ’08/H&S; Ph.D. ’12/LS), as he discovers the sturgeon migration using acoustic transmitter tags.
Emily Watkins Elliott (M.A. ’11/H&S) had an essay she wrote while at VCU accepted and published in the journal American Literary Realism.
Andrew Villamagna, M.D.* (M.D. ’06/M), was elected a fellow by the American Academy of Family Physicians, one of the nation’s largest medical organizations representing more than 110,600 family physicians, family medicine residents and medical students.
