Office of Medical Communications

Congratulations to Dev Majumdar, PhD on his receipt of a SPARK-VT award! The Majumdar Lab will work to develop a method to map and measure the repertoire of B cells that are binding to antigens from SARS-COV2.

Congratulations to Jonathan Boyson, PhD on his receipt of an NIH R03 award! Dr. Boyson is the PI for a project entitled “Defining the SAP-dependent and SAP-independent gamma delta TCR repertoire.”

Congratulations to Gary An, MD and Chase Cockrell, PhD of the An-Cockrell Lab at UVM Larner College of Medicine on being a participant of a multi-institution research team led by the University of Pittsburgh that recently secured a $22 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Bioelectronics for Tissue Regeneration (BETR) program.

Congratulations to Thomas Ahern, PhD as first author in the paper entitled "Improving the Transparency of meta-analysis by using interactive web applications".

The UVM Medical Center and Vaccine Testing Center have successfully reached and surpassed the targeted number of enrollees for an ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Despite the many challenges presented by the pandemic, the resilience of UVM Cancer Center patients and continued commitment of providers have led to a silver lining: a way to ensure patients in locations throughout Vermont and upstate New York are receiving the physical and mental health support they need right from the comfort of their own homes.

Brian Sprague, PhD along with his collaborators has been awarded an R03 grant from NCI to study a new technology in breast cancer screening (tomosynthesis with synthetic 2D views).

Vermonters have a reputation for showing up for their community – whether there’s a pandemic or not. That’s also true for the faculty and staff of the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program (VCHIP), who have underscored over the past nine months just how important their role is to ensuring providers get access to critical resources and tools that allow them to deliver quality care.

Medical and graduate school is already an incredible challenge and the wellness of students relies heavily on the financial support of generous donors from within and outside of the community who give to the Larner College of Medicine Fund. This fund not only supports the creation and continuation of scholarships, but also helps to support research grants, ever-evolving technology needs, and student wellness initiatives.

A study by UVM faculty members published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that in a group of first-year university students, COVID-19 mitigation protocols had a modest, but persistent, impact on mood and wellness behaviors. Students enrolled in the university's wellness program, however, had improved mood levels and fewer attention problems.

Recent Seminar Series Presentations

As "Vision 2025: A Unified Strategic Plan for the Larner College of Medicine" is officially rolled out, Dean Richard L. Page, M.D., sat down for a conversation exploring the goals of the plan, and the wide-reaching examination of the institution that went into its formulation.

Vermonters have a reputation for showing up for their community – whether there’s a pandemic or not. That’s also true for the faculty and staff of the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program (VCHIP), who have underscored over the past nine months just how important their role is to ensuring providers get access to critical resources and tools that allow them to deliver quality care.

The UVM Larner College of Medicine's Public Health Projects Poster Session & Community Celebration was held virtually December 10-11 and is accessible here.

A recent study conducted by collaborators from the University of Vermont and Cedars-Sinai describes the performance of South Burlington, Vt.-based Biocogniv’s new AI-COVID™ software.

(DECEMBER 11, 2020) William Raszka, M.D., professor of pediatrics, commented on COVID-19 transmission among schoolchildren in a National Review article, titled "The New York Times’ Shifting Narrative on School COVID Closures."

This fall, Larner College of Medicine Class of 2023 medical students participated in the largest and most comprehensive public health project ever completed by a University of Vermont medical student class – an unprecedented activity during an unprecedented pandemic. On December 10 and 11, 17 Public Health Projects featuring findings from a statewide survey were shared at a Virtual Poster Session and Community Celebration.

Dr. Elias Klemperer, a VCBH Project Leader and UVM assistant professor of psychiatry, has been awarded a Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network Rapid Innovation Grant (JCOIN) (J-RIG), a mechanism that supports small research studies on newly emerging policies, practices or interventions that address prevention and treatment of opioid use disorder in justice settings. Dr. Richard Rawson, professor of psychiatry at VCBH will be a co-investigator with Dr. Klemperer on the two-year study.