2023 News & Updates
Drs. Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko’s historic mRNA research laid the foundation that, over the past three years, has led our world out of the darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic. After recognition for their efforts – which enabled the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines – mounted with prestigious honors, including a Lasker Award and a Breakthrough Prize, there was only one higher scientific honor left to be bestowed upon these visionary scientists. Today, I write with enormous pride and excitement to congratulate them on receiving that highest of honors: the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Nobel Prizes recognize paradigm-shifting discoveries of “benefit to humankind.” Announcement of the Prize is always suspenseful, with selections often catching recipients by surprise, sometimes years into their retirement. Seldom, however, has a scientific achievement so clearly met those criteria in the minds of so many people or had such immediate and visceral relevance to our lives. Drs. Karikó and Weissman are being honored for mRNA research conducted nearly 20 years ago, propelled by their vision to make a difference in a world we could not yet see.
They were focused on discovering a way to use mRNA to treat disease. Still, their work proved prescient as a vaccine technology harnessed to prevent a then-unknown disease that would, many years later, become a defining event of our lifetimes. Since the rollout of the two mRNA vaccines in late 2020, millions of lives have been saved, and scores of others have been protected from severe disease even in the face of increasingly transmissible virus variants.
Please take a few moments to hear directly from Drs. Weissman and Karikó about their work together that has brought us to this moment. I promise you will be inspired.
Today, we celebrate Drew and Kati – their fortitude, their vision, and their delight in the process of scientific inquiry – and come together with great pride across the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine to mark their historic contributions to our world.
With sincere thanks and admiration,
J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
Dean, Perelman School of Medicine and
Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System
2022 News & Updates
Drew Weissman
Congratulations to Drew on his election into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences! Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and advance the public good. For more than 240 years, the Academy has been electing and engaging exceptional individuals. This year’s election of 260 new members continues a tradition of recognizing accomplishments and leadership in academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research. The Academy includes members such as Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, and Martin Luther King.
Jessie Torgersen
Jessie has been selected to serve as a member of the national AASLD/IDSA Hepatitis C Guidance Panel for the next two years!
Aaron Richterman
Aaron on has been officially awarded a 5-year K23 career development award from NIMH!! This grant focuses on poverty, bandwidth and interventions to enable health behaviors in pregnant people living with HIV.
Jessie Torgersen
Jessie has been awarded 5-year K08 career development award from NIDDK! The studies proposed in the grant will provide critical insight into the mechanisms of steatosis by HIV status, will inform interventions to decrease steatosis specific to people living with HIV.
Aaron Richterman
Aaron Richterman has received a CFAR pilot award in collaboration with mentors Florence Momplaisir and Harsha Thirumurthy. Aaron aims to determine the impact of HIV and pregnancy on mental bandwidth and how that ultimately relates to successful self-management of HIV in pregnancy. These data will be very informative for his planned Career Development Award.
Vin Lo Re
Vin has been appointed IDSA co-chair for the Hepatitis C Guidance Panel for a two-year term.
Helen Zhang, Matt Ziegler & Colleagues
Congratulations to Helen and colleagues on a newly accepted manuscript!
Zhang HL, Kelly BJ, David MZ, Lautenbach E, Huang E, Bekele S, Tolomeo P, Reesey E, Loughrey S, Pegues D, Ziegler MJ for the CDC Prevention Epicenters Program. SARS-CoV-2 RNA persists on surfaces following terminal disinfection of COVID-19 hospital isolation rooms. Am J Infect Control. In Press.
Max Parrish & Ashley King
Many thanks to Max Parrish and Ashley King for providing an excellent LGBTQ+ cultural competency training on 1/14. They guided us through key concepts and terminology related to gender identity and sexual orientation to were very useful in helping us better care for our LGBTQ+ patients.
Matt Ziegler
Congratulations to Matt and colleagues on the acceptance of publication from a CDC Prevention Epicenter multicenter collaborative.
Ziegler MJ, Babcock HH, Welbel SF, Warren DK, Trick WE, Tolomeo P, Omorogbe J, Garcia D, Habroch-Bach T, Donceras O, Gaynes S, Cressman L, Burnham JP, Bilker W, Reddy SC, Pegues D, Lautenbach E, Kelly BJ, Fuchs B, Martin ND, Han JH for the CDC Prevention Epicenters Program. Stopping hospital infections with environmental services (SHINE): A cluster-randomized trial of intensive monitoring methods for terminal room cleaning on rates of multidrug-resistant organisms in the intensive care unit. Clinical Infectious Diseases. Accepted for Publication
Ted Kreider & Sneha Thatipelli
Many thanks to Ted and Sneha for leading an interactive educational session with high school students involved in science programs at the Mutter Museum. Sneha presented a TB case and Ted showed a video of his lab which fascinated the kids. The kids were so engaged!
Tiffany Yuh
Congratulations to Tiffany who will be taking on a Clinical Assistant Professor position at the University of Pittsburgh and will be part of their telemedicine program, Infectious Disease Connect. She will be onto help infectious disease consultations via telemedicine for hospitals in rural areas around the US that do not otherwise have infectious disease consultants. She also plans to be involved in outcomes research related to telemedicine infectious disease care.
Alyssa Mezochow
Alyssa’s abstract submission to the American Transplant Congress was selected for an oral presentation. The abstract is titled “Infectious Disease Testing Among US Deceased Organ Donors.” For this abstract, she used a national database of transplant candidates and recipients to evaluate the patterns of missingness in pre-transplant infectious diseases screening.
Audrey John, Harvey Friedman, & T32 Basic Science Team
Congratulations to Audrey Odom John, Chief of ID at CHOP, and Harvey Friedman for receiving a perfect impact score of 10 on the 5-year renewal of the “Combined Adult and Pediatric Infectious Disease Postdoctoral Training Grant”. The grant is intended for MD or MD/PhD post-doctoral fellows interested in bench science research training in microbiology, microbial immunology or microbiome research related to infectious diseases. Special recognition goes to the great fellows, past and present, enrolled on the grant, including current fellows Angela Desmond (CHOP ID), Ross England (Penn-CHOP ID) and Ted Kreider (Penn ID), and to the 29 talented scientists listed as mentors on the grant.
Dovie Watson
Congratulations to Dovie on her publication in JIAS!
Article here: A retrospective study of HIV pre‐exposure prophylaxis counselling among non‐Hispanic Black youth diagnosed with bacterial sexually transmitted infections in the United States, 2014–2019 - Watson - 2022 - Journal of the International AIDS Society - Wiley Online Library
Judith Anesi
Congratulations to Judith Anesi who has been appointed to a three year term as a member of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Disease Transmission Advisory Committee (DTAC). DTAC is a joint venture between the CDC and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and seeks to assess and develop policies to reduce the risk of donor disease transmission through organ transplantation in the US.
Nancy Aitcheson
Nancy's Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) pilot abstract entitled "Characteristics and clinical outcomes of patients receiving HIV diagnoses in emergency departments in Philadelphia, 2014-2019” was accepted as an e-poster at the 24th International AIDS Conference, to be held in Montreal, Canada this summer. Nancy has done an amazing job moving this work forward and is collaborating with many stakeholders for this project, including members of the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office (AACO) of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
Erica Weinstein
Congratulations to Erica Weinstein for her recent publication on guidelines for management of osteomyelitis in JAMA Open Network. Erica was part of these new guidelines and this new approach to medical guidelines, and just got word this was accepted. She particularly contributed to authorship of the PJI sections.
Erica Weinstein
Congratulations to Erica on the funding of her F32 grant for this upcoming academic year. The grant will support her continued research career development and work on a project entitled “Prosthetic Joint Infection After Primary Total Knee Arthroplasty: Incidence, Microbiology and Risk Factors”.
Kurt Palumbo
Congratulations to Kurt Palumbo, PA-C for receiving the Advanced Practice Fellowship Education Award! "This award is given annually to an individual whom the Fellows identify as having, with exceptional effort and effectiveness, contributed to their education."
Julia Gasior, MS2
Julia Gasior, MS2, was awarded an IDSA GERM grant for 2022! Her proposalaims to identify barriers to care engagement following hepatitis C diagnosis through our inpatient hepatitis C screening and linkage program. Completion of herstudy will generate the data necessary to direct care navigation activities to improve access to curative treatment. Mentor: Jessie Torgersen
Drew Weissman
Congratulations to Drew on his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences!
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/six-Penn-elected-american-academy-arts-sciences-2022
Michael David & Bill Short
Congratulations to Bill and Michael on an outstanding CME conference “Infectious Disease Update for Primary Care Providers 2022”!! And many thanks to all the speakers who helped make this an fantastic conference!!
Judy O’Donnell
Congratulations to Judy for her recent receipt of a Penn Cares Commitment to Excellence Award! She received this specifically for working designing and managing the Penn Open Pass and Red Pass program.
Naasha Talati
Congratulations to Naasha for her recent Penn Cares Commitment to Excellence Award! She received this specifically for serving in the role of University Epidemiologist during the COVID pandemic.
Welcome to Arianne Morrison
Arianne Morrison will be joining the division as an Instructor in Medicine effective July 1, 2022.
Arianne received her BA from Williams College followed by an MD from Wake Forest. She subsequently completed her Internal Medicine Residency at East Carolina University School of Medicine. Since 2019, she has been an ID fellow at UNC. During her fellowship, she has also completed a Preventive Medicine Residency at UNC as well as a Master of Science in Clinical Research at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. As part of her MSCR work, she has been conducting research focused on PrEP and PrEP uptake, particularly in cisgender women, MSM, and transgender women. She has also done work in community outreach to increase diversity within HIV prevention research participants.
In addition to doing outpatient time at PCAM and some inpatient time at HUP/GSPP, Arianne will be continuing to build her research portfolio with a goal of submitting a K grant within the next 1-2 years. She will be working closely with Helen, Florence, and Ian but is very much looking forward to getting to know all members of the division and identifying additional collaborators. To that end, once she officially starts here, I’ll send an introduction email around and introduce her at management conference.
David Pegues
Congratulations to David Pegues who was just named as Deputy Editor of Clinical Infectious Diseases!!
Jim Harrigan
Jim received an IDWeek Trainee travel Award for IDWeek! This is to support his travel in presenting the abstract “Analysis of Prescribing Patterns for Respiratory Tract Illnesses Following the Conclusion of an Education and Feedback Intervention.”
Aaron Richterman
Congratulations to Aaron for his publication entitled "Trends in Transactional Sex Among Women at Risk for HIV in Rural Kenya During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic" in JAMA Network Open.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2793871
Nancy Aitcheson
Congratulations to Nancy Aitcheson for her accepted IDSA abstract. The title of her poster is "The Cascade of Care for Early Infant Diagnosis in Zimbabwe: Point of Care HIV Testing at Birth and 6-8 weeks". She will present Friday Oct 21 from 12:15 to 1:30 pm.
Welcome to Sahrish Ilyas
Sahrish Ilyas will be joining the division as Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine effective July 1, 2022. Her official start date will be August 15, 2022.
Sahrish received her Bachelors in Medicine and Bachelors in Surgery from CMH Lahore Medical College. She completed her Internal Medicine residency at Wayne State University in Michigan after which she was selected to serve as Chief Resident at Detroit Receiving Hospital. She was then recruited to ID Fellowship at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, where she has just completed her fellowship. During her fellowship, she also completed specialty training in Transplant ID.
Sahrish will be spending the majority of her time in clinical ID with inpatient time on various services at HUP and outpatient time at PCAM. She will be focused primarily on general ID but will also seek to continue her transplant ID interests as opportunities arise. Once she officially starts here, I’ll send an introduction email around and introduce her at management conference.
2022 Awards & Recognitions
We are thrilled to share with you the recipients of this year’s ID Division Faculty and Fellow Awards!
Outstanding ID Clinical Fellow
Sneha Thatipelli
Robert Austrian Outstanding ID Research Fellow
Erica Weinstein
Stephen J. Gluckman ID Faculty Teaching Award
Jessica Meisner & Kathleen Murphy
Harvey M. Friedman ID Faculty Mentoring Award
Katie Bar & Florence Momplaisir
Appointment of Judith A. O’Donnell as Associate Chief Medical Officer:
Dr. Judith A. O’Donnell has assumed a new role as an Associate Chief Medical Officer for Healthcare Epidemiology for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Dr. O’Donnell is the Hospital Epidemiologist and Director of the Department of Infection Prevention & Control, and the Chief of the Section of Infectious Diseases, at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. While continuing in these roles, her new responsibilities as the Associate CMO will include continuing to lead on pandemic preparedness, to support and collaborate with the Infection Prevention Alliance to implement new initiatives to decrease healthcare associated infections across our health system, and to support system efforts to become a high reliability organization.
Appointment of Helen Koenig as Medical Director of Ambulatory Operations for the Department of Medicine:
Helen Koenig, MD, MPH has been appointed as the Medical Director of Ambulatory Operations for the Department of Medicine, effective September 1, 2022. In this capacity, Dr. Koenig will develop and implement innovative programs to improve the quality of our care, the safety for our patients and providers, and the wellbeing of our clinicians and staff. Critically, we seek to have even greater cohesion and collaboration across ambulatory practices for these mutual goals as we strive towards improved access to our clinics.
Jessie Torgersen: Appointment as Assistant Professor of Medicine:
Jessie Torgersen has been appointed as Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) in the CE track, effective July 1, 2022. In addition to her inpatient and outpatient clinical time, with her outpatient time focused on hepatitis and hepatitis/HIV coinfection, she will continue to build her impressive research program focused on HIV-related liver disease research.
Lauren Dutcher: Appointment as Assistant Professor of Medicine:
Lauren Dutcher has been appointed as Assistant Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) in the CE track, effective July 1, 2022. In her faculty role, Lauren will be continuing to grow her research program focused on observational and interventional studies of antibiotic stewardship, as well as stewardship methods. She will also continue in her administrative roles in antibiotic stewardship and IDTS.
Rahul Kohli: 2022 recipient of the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Basic Science Teaching
Rahul Kohli is the 2022 recipient of the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Basic Science Teaching!! This award was established in 1987 to recognize teaching excellence and commitment to medical education in the basic sciences. This is one of the premier awards given out by the SOM every year, and highlights the faculty member who best exemplifies dedication to basic science in medical education.
Jeff Doyon: VAMC "Doctor of the Year"
Congratulate Jeff on his being awarded the 2022 Crescenz VAMC Doctor of the Year.
Jeff became and remains our subject matter expert on all things COVID 19 for the hospital, the CLC, Occupational Health, our Homeless Program, and our vaccine delivery efforts. To quote one of the multiple nominating letters: “Dr. Doyon is tireless in his work ethic, his Veteran-Centered approach, his professionalism, and his servant leadership…
he is the epitome of professionalism”. I have worked closely with Dr. Doyon over the last nearly 3 years. Jeff is a superb physician … indeed as exemplar of what it means to be a physician…Jeff is a sought-after and wise clinician, an influential teacher and a caring person. Please join me in offering warmest congratulations and our gratitude to Dr. Doyon upon his recognition as the 2022 Crescenz VAMC Doctor of the Year."
Katie Bar: 2022 recipient of the Berwick award
Katie Bar is the 2022 recipient of the Berwick award!!
The award was established in 1980 by the Department of Pathology, the Berwick family, and Dr. Berwick’s colleagues to honor Leonard Berwick, a former member of the department and an esteemed teacher. This is one of the premier awards given out by the SOM every year, and highlights the faculty member who most effectively fuses basic science and clinical medicine in teaching.
Keith Hamilton: 2022 Richard P. Shannon Faculty Award for Outstanding Leadership in Quality and Safety recipient
Keith Hamilton has been selected as the recipient of the 2022 Richard P. Shannon Faculty Award for Outstanding Leadership in Quality and Safety!
Keith's durable work in antimicrobial stewardship, outpatient antimicrobial therapy, antimicrobial prescribing, and, most abundantly clear in the last two years, his leadership and organization of COVID therapeutics have been simply exceptional in scope and organization. The support from leaders across Infectious Diseases, the Department of Medicine, Pharmacy, HUP, and the Health System emphasizes the reach of his influence. Keith's leadership and contributions to the quality and safety of patients, patient populations, and providers across the full DOM, UPHS, and beyond have been exemplary.
2021 Awards & Recognitions
Florence Momplaisir
Congratulations to Florence and the entire team on another publication!
"Racial/Ethnic Differences in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Health Care Workers in 2 Large Academic Hospitals."
Lauren Dutcher
Congratulations to Lauren Dutcher (and team including Keith Hamilton) on their abstract accepted for an oral presentation at ID Week.
Dutcher L, Li Y, Lee G, Grundmeier R, Hamilton KW, Gerber JS; For the CDC Prevention Epicenters Program. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Antibiotic Prescribing in Pediatric Primary Care.ID Week 2021 Annual Scientific Conference, Oct 2021, Virtual Event
Of note, Lauren was also the recipient of the IDWeek 2021 Program Committee Choice Award. Per ID Week, “This award is given to the four best accepted abstracts overall."
Jim Harrigan
Jim led analysis of a longitudinal cohort study that defined how the respiratory microbiome changes during prolonged critical illness and features of the respiratory microbiome that best predict risk for bacterial pneumonia. His work resulted in a first-author manuscript that was just released in CID:
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab678/6345365?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Steve Gluckman
Steve took second place in his age group at the Steelman Triathlon!! As Steve said, “…was nosed out by a youngster of 71. Too many years to give away…”
The Outstanding Infectious Diseases Clinical Fellow Award
Daniel Escobar, MD, MS
The Robert Austrian Outstanding Infectious Diseases Research Fellow Award
Cedric Bien-Gund, MD
The Infectious Diseases Faculty Teaching Award
Peter Liu, MD & Anne Norris, MD
The Harvey M. Friedman Infectious Diseases Faculty Mentoring Award
Vincent Lo Re, III, MD, MSCE
Robert Dunning Dripps Award for Excellence in Graduate Medical Education
Todd Barton, MD
Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence by Non-Standing Faculty
Keith Hamilton, MD
Special Deans Award
Neil Fishman, MD & Kathleen Murphy, MD
Erica Weinstein
Congratulations to Erica Weinstein for her paper demonstrating the accuracy of a diagnostic coding algorithm for prosthetic joint infections was accepted by Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.
Lauren Dutcher, Keith Hamilton, Kathleen Degnan, Michael David, David Pegues, et al.
Congratulation to Lauren, Keith and crew for their recent publication focusing on an initiative to improve antibiotic prescribing in outpatient respiratory tract infections. This was a major project funded by the CDC Prevention Epicenters program here at Penn/CHOP.
Dutcher L, Degnan K, Adu-Gyamfi AB, Lautenbach E, Cressman L, David MZ, Cluzet V, Szymczak JE, Pegues DA, Bilker W, Tolomeo P, Hamilton KW; CDC Prevention Epicenters Program. Improving Outpatient Antibiotic Prescribing for Respiratory Tract Infections in Primary Care; a Stepped-Wedge Cluster Randomized Trial. Clin Infect Dis. 2021 Jul 2:ciab602. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciab602.
Dovie Watson
Congratulations to Dovie on CFAR Ending the HIV Epidemic Supplement “Perspectives in HIV biomedical prevention among racially/ethnically diverse transgender and gender diverse adults in the United States”. Tackling a component of the PrEP care continuum to complement with her Diversity Supplement. Another brick in building her career path!
Katie Bar
Congratulations Katie Bar for her 2 new funded R01s!
Award #1: 1R01AI162646-01A1
Title: Characterizing the viral and host effector mechanisms that govern HIV-1 rebound
A functional cure of HIV-1, or the establishment of antiretroviral therapy (ART)-free remission, requires novel approaches to prevent or delay rebound viremia following ART cessation. A critical barrier to developing such strategies is the lack of understanding of the viral and host effector mechanisms that control HIV-1 reactivation in vivo. We recently discovered that viruses that rebound from latency following treatment interruption display the highest levels of IFN-I resistance observed at any time during the infection course. In collaboration with Dr. Beatrice Hahn, they will characterize the viral factors that contribute to this phenotype and dissect key host defense mechanisms that place pressure on the rebounding virus pool. Harnessing these defenses may translate into more effective HIV/AIDS cure strategies.
Award #2: R01 MH128155-01
Title: Novel macrophage-tropic transmitted/founder SHIV model of CNS persistence to evaluate CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing
Characterization of the CNS reservoir and empiric testing of novel cure strategies require physiologically relevant animal models of HIV persistence in the brain. The study will integrate major advances from ourroups in transmitted/founder (TF) SHIV NHP models and AAV-delivered CRISPR/Cas9 editing to delineate key features of the CNS reservoir and assess a promising approach to eradicative cure. In coordinated NHP experiments, they will use barcoded, macrophage-tropic TF SHIV.D to elucidate the mechanisms of CNS persistence and test the efficacy of global and myeloid-specific CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to cure HIV.
Nancy Aitcheson
Congratulations to Nancy for having her Penn LDI-CFAR-Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) “Ending the HIV Epidemic” pilot project on HIV testing in the ED selected to move on to the next step. Nancy will need to present her project to a review committee of Penn LDI, CFAR, and health department representatives for final selection!
Florence Momplaisir
Congratulations to Florence on a recently published paper that she worked on using data from IMPAACT P1025. This is a very nice and important paper that identifies a population at high risk for viral failure and a potential intervention that may have an impact (treatment of depression).
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab416/6274991?guestAccessKey=b9255428-6efa-41dc-b2fe-2587b624c772
Perinatal Depressive Symptoms, HIV Suppression, and the Underlying Role of ART Adherence: A Longitudinal Mediation Analysis in the IMPAACT P1025 Cohort
Rahul Kohli
Congratulations! A new R01 has been awarded to Dr. Rahul Kohli for his project “Engineering Efficient and Controllable Base Editors.” DNA deaminase enzymes can generate purposeful genomic mutations and play important immune defense roles, but are naturally constrained in various manners that make them suboptimal as biotechnological tools. This project will leverage knowledge of DNA deaminase structure and function to engineer CRISPR/Cascoupled base editors that are capable of generating targeted genomic changes in an efficient and controllable manner. The outcome of this work will be an enhanced understanding of the base editing mechanism and a suite of editing tools with properties necessary to study, diagnose, or treat diseases involving precise genomic changes.