Celebrating Excellence in Research - A USU Tradition

David Loebsack
health.mil

May 19, 2010

Every spring, during the week leading up to graduation, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) hosts a week of activities dedicated to celebrating excellence in research. “Research Week” offers students, faculty and staff the opportunity to collaborate with one another and publicly promote their scientific studies. For the graduating class of 2010, it also offers one last chance for classmates to reunite before they enter their professional careers as physicians, biomedical scientists and advanced practice nurses.

During the week, Research Week 2010 attendees caught a first-hand glimpse of the groundbreaking research that has taken place within the walls of USU over the past year. They heard from some America’s foremost medical leaders including doctors from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Service, and each service branch. They also watched a wide range of students present their unpublished work during the annual USU poster presentations.

Research week is an exciting time for students, but it is also a momentous occasion in medicine as two very special – and highly prestigious – research awards are given out every year to USU faculty members and Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute scientists who made significant contributions to their field.

Dr. Ann Jerse, who teaches Microbiology and Immunology at USU, received the Henry C. Wu Award for excellence in research as a result of her work with Neisseria gonorrhoea – a strain of bacteria which is becoming highly resistant to antibiotic treatment. Dr. Jerse’s team and their research partners at Emory University have made great strides in learning how the bacteria adapts to its host, with the ultimate goal of finding new ways to develop antibiotics or vaccines.

The second award – the James J. Leonard award – was presented to Dr. Marian Tanofsky-Kraff, assistant professor of Medical and Clinical Psychology. Dr. Tanofsky-Kraff was awarded for her work in discovering that Loss of Control (LOC) eating, which involves an experience of being unable to control what or how much one is eating, is a major contributor to obesity which may be successfully mitigated through an interpersonally-focused prevention program.

Her team’s approach was unique: Instead of increasing dietary restraints or taking one of the many typical approaches toward inducing weight loss in adolescents, Tanofsky-Kraff’s team focused on reducing LOC episodes. LOC eating was determined to be a common coping mechanism for girls who have poor social interactions. Thus the team conducted a pilot study in which they focused on improving the interpersonal functioning of above-average weight adolescent girls, with the hypothesis that if social interactions could improve, LOC episodes would diminish and excessive weight gain would decrease.

The team’s success has been widely praised in the medical community, and Tanofsky-Kraff was awarded a $1 million, four-year grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the NIH to continue working in this area. She is currently conducting the larger study, in which she will examine110 girls with the same hypothesis.

“Honestly, I am so surprised at how much attention my work has received,” said Tanofsky-Kraff. “I’m so grateful for the recognition my team has earned. They are an outstanding group of doctors and scientists. I am very fortunate that they are happy to work with me.”