TRI took a strong contingent of UAMS researchers to the national Translational Science 2024 meeting, including two TRI KL2 scholars who qualified to compete in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®), part of the event sponsored by the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS).
The annual meeting on April 2-5 drew over 1,200 researchers and staff from across the United States representing more than 60 Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) institutions and several non-CTSA clinical research organizations.
TRI’s 3MT® competitors, Nakita Lovelady, Ph.D., and Jenny Rumpel, M.D., both supported by KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Program Scholar Awards, were among the TRI-supported investigators and TRI staff at the ACTS meeting in Las Vegas. Lovelady, an assistant professor in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, presented her implementation of Arkansas’ first Hospital-based Violence Intervention Program. Rumpel, an assistant professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, presented how acute kidney injury contributes to infant mortality.
The 3MT® is an academic research communication competition developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia that cultivates students’ academic, presentation and research communication skills.
Two other TRI KL2 scholars, Timothy “Cody” Ashby, Ph.D., and Alicja Urbaniak, Ph.D., had poster abstracts that ranked in the event’s top 50 of 560 posters displayed, a recognition that placed them in an elite group of oral presenters.
Ashby, an assistant professor in the College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics, presented his poster, titled, “Unraveling the Impact of Alternative Splicing in Multiple Myeloma.”
Urbaniak, an instructor in the College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, presented her poster, “Beyond Antibiotics: Monensin and its Derivatives as Promising Anti-Breast Cancer Agents.”
“Translational Science 2024 was a great opportunity for trainees, early-career researchers and CTSA staff from across the country to connect and learn from each other,” said TRI Executive Director Christi Madden, MPA, who was a panel presenter at the Research Operations and Administration Special Interest Group meeting.
TRI’s Mathias Brochhausen, Ph.D., and Mario Schootman, Ph.D., served as judges for the 3MT® competition. Brochhausen leads TRI’s Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies Program and is a professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Schootman co-directs TRI’s Translational Workforce Development Program and is a professor in the College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Community Health and Research.
Antiño Allen, Ph.D., TRI associate director of Pathway Initiatives, and Paul Duguid, MPH, TRI director of Research Programs, co-presented a poster on TRI’s Strategies for Training and Advancing Researchers (STARS) program.
TRI’s Crystal Sparks, MSAM, assistant director of programs, presented a poster with colleagues in the CTSA External Reviewer Exchange Consortium (CEREC) team on how translational research vs. translational science is perceived by topic experts in CTSA-funded pilot projects.
Other UAMS-affiliated researchers representing TRI were:
- John Arthur, M.D., Ph.D., and Elisabet Borsheim, Ph.D., co-directors of the KL2 program
- Kevin Sexton, M.D., and John Imig, Ph.D., co-directors of the TRI TL1 Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Program.
- Tiffany Haynes, Ph.D., director of the TRI Community Engagement Program, and Keneshia Bryant-Moore, Ph.D., APRN, co-director of the program
- Anna Huff-Davis, chair of the TRI Community Advisory Board and a TRI community liaison.
- KL2 scholars: Jennifer Anderson, Ph.D., Nishank Jain, M.D., Michail Mavros, M.D., Brian Piccolo, Ph.D., Katy Allison, Ph.D., Akilah Jefferson, M.D., Megha Sharma, M.D., and Deepa Raghavan, M.D.
- HSIE trainees: David Church, Ph.D., Lauren Russell Fitzgerald, Ph.D., Ashley Pike, Ph.D., Stephen Shrum, Ph.D., Henry Palfrey, Ph.D., and Tiffany Miles, Ph.D.
- Taren Swindle, Ph.D., TRI Implementation Science Scholars Program faculty representative and KL2 scholar graduate.