Ticker Summer

U.S. News ranks Emory schools in Top 25

Emory’s medical, law and business schools are among the Top 25 schools in America, according to U.S.News & World Report's 2003 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” guide. Emory’s School of Medicine ranked twentieth among research-oriented medical schools and twenty-fifth among primary-care oriented medical schools. The Goizueta Business School’s MBA program ranked 22nd. Emory’s School of Law was ranked twenty-second and its trial advocacy program was ranked seventh.

Most cited researchers

The Institute for Scientific Information lists five Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center faculty as among the world’s most frequently cited scientific researchers in academic journal articles. They are: Mahlon R. DeLong, professor of neurology; Michael J. Kuhar, Charles Howard Candler professor of pharmacology and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar; Kenneth P. Minneman, professor of pharmacology; Bruce H. Wainer, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine; and Allan I. Levey, professor of neurology.

Former CDC director comes to Emory

Jeffrey Koplan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been named Emory’s new vice president for academic health affairs at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center.

Emory cardiologist honored

Nanette K. Wenger, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Emory and chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital, was the recipient of the Distinguished Fellow Award of the Society of Geriatric Cardiology. Wenger is also editor-in-chief of the Society's journal, the American Journal of Geriatric Cardiology.

Transplant grants

Two grants to Emory's Woodruff Health Sciences Center from the Carlos and Marguerite Mason Trust will improve access to care for Georgia patients in need of transplants. Wachovia Bank, trustee of the Mason Trust, has awarded the Emory Transplant Center a two-year grant of $1 million in support of the Access to Transplant Care Project, and has provided bridge funding to the Emory Eye Center for its pediatric cornea transplant program.

Turner Environmental Law Clinic gets fresh resources

The Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University received two grants from the Atlanta-based Turner Foundation that will support the clinic’s pro-bono work for the next five years and help double its staff. The clinic received a five-year, unconditional grant of $575,000 to cover operational expenses, and an annual $25,000 challenge grant, renewable for five years, to fund another position.

Anthrax vaccine tested

Emory’s Vaccine Research Center has begun a five-year study of the anthrax vaccine adsorbed, the only approved human anthrax vaccine, funded by a $4.2 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The program will compare the effectiveness of three different vaccine regimens in rhesus macaque monkeys.

Psychology professor launches journal

A new academic journal, The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practices, founded and edited by associate professor of psychology Scott Lilienfeld, will focus on distinguishing science from pseudoscience in clinical psychology and will be published by Prometheus Books in Amherst, New York.

Flannery honored by Georgia governor

Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities James Flannery, a musician, writer, recording artist, and director specializing in Irish studies, was honored by Georgia Governor Roy Barnes and the Georgia Humanities Council as a Humanities Hero.

Stroke center created

An Emory-MBNA Stroke Center has been created with a $7.5 million grant from MBNA America Bank. Specialists in neurology, neurosurgery, neurocritical care, and interventional neuroradiology will work together in the center at Emory Clinic, collaborating in patient care, education, and research.

Center to pursue juvenile diabetes solutions

A Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Center for Islet Transplantation has been launched at Emory with a $4.1 million grant from from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (www.jdrf.org). The center’s research will focus on conquering autoimmunity and tolerance issues surrounding rejection of donor islets–pancreatic cells related to diabetes.

School of Medicine receives $4.2 million grant

The National Institutes of Health have awarded a three-year, $4.2 million grant to the School of Medicine to open the first General Clinical Research Center at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta. The clinical research center will support Emory and Morehouse physician-scientists in tackling some of the most intractable problems found at Grady, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, HIV/AIDS, kidney disease caused by sickle cell anemia, and traumatic injury.

Emory professors receive Guggenheim Fellowships

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded fellowships to Lawrence Barsalou, professor of psychology, and

Kristin Mann, associate professor of history. Barsalou, a cognitive psychologist, will use his fellowship to write a book covering his thirty years of research on the human conceptual system, and Mann, a specialist in colonial African history, will finish her book, The Birth of an African City: Trade, State and Emancipation in Ninteenth-Century Lagos.

Endowment for Eye Disease Research

The Emory Eye Center has created an endowment fund with three million dollars from the estate of Louis Stanley Whitaker, a longtime newspaper executive and former resident of Atlanta, and his wife, Myrna Newell Whitaker, to foster research and treatment of eye disease.

Endowed chair in neuropsychopharmacology

In honor of its founder, Janssen Pharmaceutica has donated $1.5 million to the Emory School of Medicine to endow the Paul Janssen Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology–the study of drugs and their effects on the human mind, brain, and behavior.