2022 Scholars
2021 Scholars
Cohort 10 (2020)
Kimberly Stephens, Ph.D., MPH
Britini Ayers, Ph.D.
Jure Baloh, Ph.D., MHA
Cohort 9 (2019)
Tara Johnson, M.D.
Stefanie Kennon-McGill, Ph.D.
Pearman Parker, Ph.D., MPH, RN
Isabelle Racine-Miousse, Ph.D.
Jennifer Vincenzo, Ph.D., MPH, PT
Cohort 8 (2017)
Lisa Brents, Ph.D.
Rosemary Nabaweesi, Dr.P.H.
Carolina Schinke, M.D.
Sufna John, Ph.D.
Cohort 7 (2015)
Bryce Marquis, Ph.D.
Shona Ray-Griffith, M.D.
Cohort 6 (2014)
Satish Kenchaiah, M.D., M.P.H.
Taren Swindle, Ph.D.
Cohort 5 (2013)
Joshua Kennedy, M.D.
Elvin Price, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
Cohort 4 (2012)
Tiffany Haynes, Ph.D.
Anthony Goudie, Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
Brooke Montgomery, Ph. D., M.P.H.
Cohort 3 (2011)
Keneshia Bryant, Ph.D., R.N., F.N.P., B.C.
Ling Gao, M.D., Ph.D.
George Andrew James, Ph.D.
Karen McNiece Redwine, M.D., M.P.H.
Cohort 2 (2010)
Dennis Kuo, M.D., M.H.S.
Sundararaman Swaminathan, M.D.
Cohort 1 (2009)
Wang “Steve” Cheung, M.D., Ph.D.
Holly Felix, Ph.D., M.P.A.
Cohort 8 (2017)
Lisa Brents, Ph.D.
Project Title: The Metabolic and Pharmacodynamic Profile of Deuterated Buprenorphine
Lisa Brents, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the UAMS College of Medicine. The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support her project that attempts to improve buprenorphine treatment of opioid use disorder during pregnancy by reducing fetal exposure to an active metabolite of buprenorphine, norbuprenorphine.
Opioid abuse during pregnancy often leads to withdrawal in the neonate, which can be painful and difficult to treat and requires prolonged, costly care in neonatal intensive care units. Buprenorphine is a highly effective treatment for pregnant women who have opioid use disorder and considerably improves maternal and neonatal outcomes; however, because buprenorphine is an opioid, it too can cause neonatal withdrawal symptoms. Several lines of evidence suggest that fetuses of buprenorphine-treated women are exposed to significant amounts of norbuprenorphine, an active metabolite of buprenorphine that is a powerful opioid and can contribute to fetal opioid dependence that leads to neonatal opioid withdrawal. This project will use in vitro and rodent models to test a modified version of buprenorphine that is expected will resist metabolism to norbuprenorphine but will otherwise retain the pharmacological properties of buprenorphine. It is anticipated that this modification will successfully treat maternal opioid use disorder while reducing fetal exposure to norbuprenorphine and neonatal withdrawal severity.
Brents joined the UAMS College of Medicine faculty in 2016 and was an inaugural recipient of the UAMS Fellow-to-Faculty Award. She was a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) T32 postdoctoral fellow in the Brain Imaging Research Center with the UAMS Department of Psychiatry. Brents completed her doctoral dissertation in 2013 in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the UAMS College of Medicine.
Rosemary Nabaweesi, Dr.P.H.
Project Title: Developing Safe Sleep Interventions for Rural Underserved Communities
Dr. Nabaweesi is currently the Senior Director of Research and Evaluation in the Division of Diversity Equity and Inclusion at UAMS. Rosemary is a health services researcher who received her doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Nabaweesi is the 3rd year co-chair for Region 7 Academic Pediatric Association and a recent graduate scholar of the KL2 program. Dr. Nabaweesi’s KL2 project explored disparate uptake of infant safe sleep recommendations by vulnerable. The project gathered the perspective of new mothers’ and their community advisers on safe sleep guidelines, including perceptions of barriers, facilitators, and psychosocial factors that contribute to the lower rates of adherence, insights which may be key to developing a culturally-tailored intervention.
She is currently a Leadership in Equitable Evaluation and Diversity scholar at American University and Annie E. Casey Expand the Bench, in Baltimore, Maryland where she trained in culturally responsive and equitable evaluation with a goal to leave primary stakeholders in a liberator state.
Dr. Nabaweesi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Arkansas Children’s Research Institute. She sits on the Science and Research committee of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research organization, where she plans for the annual meeting and reviews abstracts for workshops, posters, and panel discussions. Rosemary has written several articles published in peer reviewed journals in three main areas, infant mortality health disparities, childhood trauma epidemiology, and trauma center predictive analytics and quality improvement.
Carolina Schinke, M.D.
Project Title: The Role of Pl-IF 19 as a Promoter of Tumorigenicity and Therapeutic Target in Multiple Myeloma
Carolina Schinke, M.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine and is based at the Myeloma Institute. The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support her research in determining yet undiscovered pathologic pathways in multiple myeloma and identifying new therapeutic targets.
Multiple Myeloma is a hematopoietic malignancy of differentiated plasma cells that reside within the bone marrow. It is the second most common hematologic cancer that remains incurable in the majority of patients with a low rate of survival and a need for development of new treatments. The disease course is typically characterized by recurrent relapses and increasing drug resistance that will eventually lead to aggressive disease proliferation and patient death. Preliminary work has identified PHD finger protein 19 (PHF19) as a promoter of tumor growth, drug resistance and a marker of poor prognosis in multiple myeloma. PHF19 is the main regulator of a pathway known to cause transcriptional repression and genetic silencing through histone methylation at the DNA level. It is thought that this genetic repression leads to under-expression of tumor suppressor genes resulting in a more aggressive disease phenotype.
The current project will provide functional and mechanistic data on PHF19 as a disease promoter in multiple myeloma. It is anticipated that uncovering the molecular mechanisms by which PHF19 regulates multiple myeloma will determine yet unknown pathologic pathways that will lead to the discovery of new therapeutic targets and treatment interventions.
Schinke joined the Myeloma Institute in 2014 after completing her medical residency and hematology-oncology fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. She received her medical degree from the University of Halle-Saale, Germany and is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in the subspecialties of Hematology and Medical Oncology.
Sufna John, Ph.D.
Project Title: Improving Outcomes for Young Children with Behavior Disorders: A Coordinated Care Model
Sufna John, Ph.D., is a Licensed Psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She co-directs the Arkansas Building Effective Services for Trauma (ARBEST) program, which focuses on improving outcomes for traumatized children and their families in Arkansas through excellence in clinical care, training, advocacy, and research. She is nationally-certified to provide several evidence-based trauma treatments for children and families and co-directs the Complex Trauma Assessment Program, which provides trauma-informed evaluation services for high-risk children in the Arkansas child welfare system. She is also the primary investigator of a Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grant that focuses on expanding the availability of comprehensive, trauma-informed evaluations for youth involved with child welfare and connecting families who have experienced trauma to evidence-based mental health treatments. She has published several research articles; participated in state workgroups; and given numerous local, state, and national presentations on topics pertaining to trauma in children and adolescents.
Cohort 7 (2015)
Bryce Marquis, Ph.D.
Project Title: Amino acid supplementation for improved physical function in geriatric heart failure patients
Bryce Marquis, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Geriatrics in the UAMS College of Medicine. The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support his project testing nutritional therapies to improve respiratory efficiency for heart failure patients.
Heart failure is prevalent in the elderly, comprising 6-10 percent of the population over the age of 65 and carrying a 35 percent risk of death within the first year of diagnosis. Exercise is an effective treatment strategy but heart failure patients suffer from reduced respiratory efficiency that limits their mobility and ability to exercise. This respiratory inefficiency is in a large part due to the impaired mitochondrial oxidative capacity found in heart failure patients. Marquis’ work aims to improve this oxidative capacity using nutritional therapies that have been previously found to be effective treatment strategies for other diseases where mitochondrial energetics are diminished. These therapies are designed to increase mitochondrial protein turnover and biogenesis while improving oxidative substrate availability.
He anticipates the results of this work will direct the development of a new nutritional approach that can be used alone or synergistically with exercise to improve health outcomes in heart failure patients.
Marquis joined the College of Medicine faculty this year from the University of Central Arkansas, where he was an assistant professor of chemistry. He received his doctorate in analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He was also a National Research Council postdoctoral associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md.
Shona Ray-Griffith, M.D.
Project Title: Neuropathic Pain in Pregnancy
Shona Ray-Griffith, M.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine. She also has a secondary appointment as assistant professor in the college’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Ray-Griffith’s KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award project is the first study using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to treat neuropathic pain in pregnant women. rTMS uses a magnetic force to change the way nerves work in the brain. Because it is non-invasive and localized, rTMS is attractive for use in special populations, such as pregnancy.
Neuropathic pain is caused by problems in the nervous system and commonly occurs in pregnancy. Managing neuropathic pain in pregnancy is difficult because treatments can have a direct effect on infant outcomes. Ray-Griffith believes rTMS may be an acceptable alternative to medications. The overall goal of her study is to define the course, management, and pregnancy outcomes of neuropathic pain in pregnancy and the acute postpartum period. The study will enroll 60 pregnant women. Over a 15-month period, all participants will receive treatment as usual, while those diagnosed with neuropathic pain will be offered rTMS as a treatment option.
Ray-Griffith joined the UAMS College of Medicine faculty in 2013 with clinical appointments in the Women’s Mental Health program and as a psychiatry consult and liaison. She received her academic appointments in 2014. She was a research fellow in the Women’s Mental Health Program and also served her residency and internship with the Department of Psychiatry. Ray-Griffith received her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and she is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Cohort 6 (2014)
Satish Kenchaiah, M.D., M.P.H.
Project title: “Distribution, Clinical Correlates, and Prognostic Significance of Segmental and Regional Left Ventricular Mass in the Framingham Heart Study”
Satish Kenchaiah, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of medicine, is the director of preventive cardiology and an attending physician in noninvasive cardiology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). His research is focused on risk factors of heart failure and determinants of cardiac structure and function.
Kenchaiah received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2014 to develop and apply new cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging tools and expand his knowledge of genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics. He plans to determine how muscle mass is distributed in various regions of the heart, identify factors including genes that may be linked to variation in the distribution of heart muscle mass, and examine the role of these in the risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure, and survival prediction.
Kenchaiah earned his medical degree from Bangalore Medical College, Bangalore University, in India and Master of Public Health degree from Harvard School of Public Health. He completed a residency in internal medicine (Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, Cornell University Medical College) and fellowships in cardiovascular epidemiology (Framingham Heart Study), preventive cardiology (VA Boston Healthcare System, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Boston University School of Medicine), cardiovascular diseases (University of California, Irvine Medical Center), and advanced cardiac imaging (Duke University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [NHLBI]). He joined the faculty at UAMS in 2013.
Mentors
Jeanne Wei, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Geriatrics, UAMS College of Medicine
Director, UAMS Reynolds Institute on Aging
Jawahar Mehta, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, UAMS College of Medicine
Warren Manning, M.D.
Professor of Medicine and Radiology, Harvard Medical School
Chief, Non-Invasive Cardiac Imaging, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Christopher O’Donnell, M.D., M.P.H.
Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Director and Scientific Director, NHLBI Framingham Heart Study
Taren Swindle, Ph.D.
Project title: “Community-Based Early Childhood Obesity Prevention”
Taren Swindle, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine in the College of Medicine, received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2014. Her research seeks to promote health across socioeconomic levels, reducing health disparities through community engagement, with a focus on obesity prevention and nutrition promotion for children. Her primary career objective is to develop and evaluate innovative obesity prevention programs, particularly for those affected by poverty, and engage communities to support family and child health. For her KL2 Scholar project, she will explore the role of early childhood educators in promoting healthy food intake, preferences, and attitudes for children.
Swindle earned a master’s degree in human development and family science from Oklahoma State University and a doctorate in educational psychology and research from the University of Memphis.
She joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in 2013.
Mentors
Leanne Whiteside-Mansell, Ed.D.
Professor, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UAMS College of Medicine
Wendy Ward, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Pediatrics, UAMS College of Medicine
Songthip Ounpraseuth, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, UAMS College of Medicine
Sean H. Adams, Ph.D.
Director, Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center
Professor & Section Chief, Developmental Nutrition, Department of Pediatrics, UAMS College of Medicine
Cohort 5 (2013)
Joshua Kennedy, M.D.
Project title: “Protease Metabolism of IL-33 in Response to Rhinovirus Amplifies Allergic Inflammation”
Joshua Kennedy, M.D., is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and an attending physician in the Allergy and Immunology Clinic at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. As a clinician scientist, he is interested in understanding the mechanisms whereby viral respiratory infections trigger asthma exacerbations. Kennedy received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2013 to investigate inflammatory cytokines generated in response to rhinovirus, a virus that causes the common cold and is associated with 60-80 percent of asthma exacerbations in children.
Kennedy earned his medical degree and completed residency training in internal medicine and pediatrics at UAMS. He completed an allergy and immunology fellowship at the University of Virginia and joined the faculty of UAMS in July 2013.
Elvin Price, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
Project title: “Genetic Variation in Nuclear Receptor Genes Predict Cardiometabolic Homeostasis”
Elvin Price, Pharm.D., Ph.D., joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in 2009 as an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences. Growing up in a rural underserved county in the panhandle of Florida where cardiovascular health ranks among the poorest in the country, Price became interested in the heritability of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). He was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2013 with the long-term goal of establishing statewide personalized medicine initiatives to reduce the burden of CVD. His KL2 Scholar project will determine if genetic polymorphisms in transcription factors are predictive of cardiometabolic risk factors in a patient cohort.
Price received his Doctor of Pharmacy from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and earned his doctorate in clinical pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Cohort 4 (2012)
Tiffany Haynes, Ph.D.
Project title: “Improving Rural Mental Health Service Use through African-American Churches”
Tiffany Haynes, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and clinical psychologist in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, Division of Health Services Research.
In 2012, Haynes received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award to examine the relationship between religious beliefs and attitudes about mental health service with the goal of developing an intervention for rural African-Americans that is delivered through churches. Ultimately, she plans to design a large scale study to test the effectiveness of a multifaceted intervention that provides education, stigma reduction, and linkage to appropriate services.
Haynes earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana and completed a master’s degree and doctorate in psychology from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. In 2012, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in advanced psychology at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in Little Rock.
Anthony Goudie, Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
Project title: “Identifying Systematic Barriers to the Translation of Best Practice Prevention Procedures for Reducing Pediatric Healthcare-Acquired Infections”
Anthony Goudie, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2012. As a child health services researcher, Goudie is interested in identifying hospital factors that can be triggers for quality improvement and targets for incentivizing to effectively improve patient safety outcomes. His KL2 project examines Clostridium difficile infections in children’s hospital to identify economic and organizational characteristics that are barriers to the translation of best practices for infection control and patient safety. The increased incidence and variation of C. difficile infection rates across hospitals is worthy of study given that hand hygiene, contact precautions, environmental cleaning, lab alerts, and staff and patient education have been demonstrated as effective measures to prevent or reduce contracting the infection. Ultimately, the results of his research will inform policy-makers on effective incentive settings for low performing hospitals.
Goudie earned his undergraduate degrees in statistics and economics from Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. He completed a Master of Public Health and a doctorate in health services research, both from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Prior to joining the faculty of UAMS in September 2011, Goudie was faculty with the Child Policy Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
Brooke Montgomery, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Project title: “Adapting and Testing an Evidence-Based Sexual Risk Reduction Intervention for Women Who Have Experienced Sexual Violence”
Brooke Montgomery, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the College of Public Health, was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2012. As a behavioral scientist, her interests lie in the intersection between sexual violence, sexual risk, mental health and substance use. Her research aims to reduce HIV and sexually transmitted infection rates among women. Her KL2 project will expand on the current literature by examining epidemiologic relationships between violence and sexual risk in a large national dataset of at-risk women, conducting interviews with community stakeholders in the field of sexual violence to identify potential facilitators and barriers to the creation and implementation of a sexual risk reduction intervention for women who have experienced sexual violence, and adapting and testing an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention for this underserved and vulnerable population.
Montgomery obtained a Bachelor of Arts in biology and women’s studies from Washington University in St. Louis and completed a Master of Public Health and doctorate in health promotion and prevention research, both from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). She joined the faculty of UAMS in 2010
Cohort 3 (2011)
Keneshia Bryant, Ph.D., R.N., F.N.P. B.C.
Project title: “Faith-Based and Community Views of Depressed African American Males”
Keneshia Bryant, Ph.D., R.N., F.N.P.-B.C., joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Nursing as an assistant professor in 2009. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Bryant was a family nurse practitioner, providing care to adults with major depressive disorders. This experience ultimately sparked her interest in pursuing a research career focused on understanding the impact of ethnicity, culture and gender on depression. In 2011, Bryant received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award to develop a research program focused on understanding the role that faith-based organizations play in recognizing and recommending treatment for depression among African-American males. Findings of her research will ultimately be used to develop a faith-based community intervention for depression among African-American males.
Bryant earned her undergraduate degrees in nursing and health care administration from the University of Michigan-Flint. She went on to complete a master’s degree and doctorate in nursing from Duke University and Azusa Pacific University, respectively.
Ling Gao, M.D., Ph.D.
Project title: “The Role of Keratin 20 in Mouse Epidermal Merkel Cell and Merkel Cell Carcinoma”
Ling Gao, M.D., Ph.D., is a board-certified dermatologist and clinician researcher interested in the pathophysiology of cutaneous diseases, particularly skin carcinogenesis. Gao was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2011 to expand her research on Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare but aggressive skin cancer for which no cure exists. Using transgenic mouse models, she plans to conduct studies to elucidate the role of epithelial kertain 20 in Merkel cell biology and pathogenesis with the long-term goal of identifying biomarkers for early diagnosis, prognosis and optimization of therapeutic targets.
Gao earned her medical degree from Tongji Medical College in China and a doctorate in molecular pathology from Uppsla University in Sweden. She completed postdoctorate training in molecular oncology and a dermatology residency at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In August 2010, she joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) as an assistant professor in the Department of Dermatology.
Karen McNiece Redwine, M.D., M.P.H.
Project title: “Improving Outcomes for Hypertensive Children”
Karen McNiece Redwine, M.D., M.P.H., is an assistant professor of pediatrics at UAMS and an attending physician in the Nephrology Clinic at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. As a clinician scientist, Redwine is dedicated to improving the lives of children with hypertension, one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in America with significant early morbidity.
Redwine was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2011 to begin developing a research program focused on creating new diagnosis and treatment strategies for pediatric hypertension which are based on measurable hypertensive sequelae in children. Redwine’s current project will assess the use of ambulatory blood pressure (ABPM) monitoring in which multiple readings are captured over an extended period of time in a patient’s natural environment.
Redwine earned her medical degree and completed a pediatrics residency at UAMS. She completed a pediatric nephrology fellowship and Master of Public Health at the University of Texas-Houston before joining the faculty of UAMS in 2007.
George Andrew James, Ph.D.
Project title: “Predicting Treatment Response to Surgical Resection in Epilepsy with Functional Neuroimaging”
George Andrew James, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, is a national expert in functional brain imaging methodology. His research interests lie in multivariate approaches to analyzing functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and how the neural networks mediating cognition encode individual variance in intelligence, personality and behavior.
James was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2011 with the long-term goal of integrating his functional neuroimaging research into clinical practice. For his KL2 Scholar project, James is incorporating 11 functional MRI tasks into the standard of care for patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy seeking surgical resection. This series of functional neuroimaging tests will allow a unique exploration of the interaction between cognition and brain function. By modeling the brain’s functional networks pre-surgery, he hopes to develop an algorithm to improve predictive modeling of surgical outcomes.
James earned his undergraduate degrees in chemistry and applied psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Florida and completed postdoctoral training at Emory University. He joined the UAMS faculty in 2009.
Cohort 2 (2010)
Dennis Kuo, M.D., M.H.S.
Project title: “Building Tertiary-Primary Co-Management for Children with Medical Complexity”
Dennis Kuo, M.D., M.H.S., is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and an attending physician in the Medical Home Clinic for Special Needs Children at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Clinically, Kuo is interested in family-centered care and promoting healthy growth and development for children with special needs. His research aims to generate important knowledge and understanding about children with medical complexity (CMC), an emerging subpopulation of children with intensive health care needs that are not easily met by existing health care models.
Kuo was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2010 and received funding to conduct a multi-institutional survey of families of CMC that describes family needs and their expectations of care. Additionally, he plans to create a full profile of CMC health service use across multiple settings, identifying reasons for specific outpatient and inpatient visits. These results will be used to translate optimal models of chronic care for CMC into the community setting.
Kuo earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his residency training in pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Hospitals. He spent several years as a physician in a general pediatrics practice before completing a research fellowship and Master of Health Science, both at Johns Hopkins University. Kuo joined the faculty of UAMS in 2008.
Sundararaman Swaminathan, M.D.
Project title: “Role of CD163+ Macrophages and lron Metabolism in Type 2 Diabetes”
Sundararaman Swaminathan, M.D., is board-certified nephrologist with clinical expertise in diabetic nephropathy, the most common cause of end-stage renal disease in the world. He received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2010 to further his research on elucidating the relationship between inflammation, altered iron metabolism, and pathways that lead to systemic fibrosis.
Swaminathan completed his medical degree from Thanjavur Medical College in India and an internal medicine residency at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center in New York. He completed a nephrology fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota prior to joined UAMS in 2005 and is now at the University of Virginia.
Cohort 1 (2009)
Wang “Steve” Cheung, M.D., Ph.D.
Project title: “Epigenetic and Proteomic Changes in Melanoma Progression”
Wang “Steve” Cheung, M.D., Ph.D., received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2009. He is currently in private practice.
Holly Felix, Ph.D., M.P.A.
Project title: “Exploring the Impact of Obesity among Elderly on the Delivery of Long-Term Care”
Holly Felix, Ph.D., M.P.A., assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management of the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, was accepted into the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award program in 2009. Felix’s research focuses on the long-term care system, with special interest in home and community-based alternatives to institutionalization. Given the differences in health care needs, use and quality of care received in medical settings by obese persons, Felix’s work explores the association between obesity and long-term care outcomes to guide the development and evaluation of policy and programmatic interventions targeting the elderly and the long-term care system to promote high quality of care with reduced health disparities.
Felix graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a Doctorate in Public Policy and earned a Master of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.