The first recipients of the Zwischenberger-Rounsavall Fund for Innovation in Surgical Research and Education were announced during the annual presentation of the Department of Surgery Teaching Awards on Wednesday morning, June 10. Dr. William B. Inabnet III, Department Chair, and Dr. Jay Zwischenberger, former department chair and the fund’s sponsor, were co-presenters of the fund’s inaugural year.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 18, 2020) — Alpacas Big Boy, Blue Eyes and Emperor may hold the key to combating COVID-19. Their antibodies could offer a defense against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease.

University of Kentucky College of Medicine researchers are using the special antibodies made by alpacas, called nanobodies, to help understand the novel coronavirus and potentially develop a treatment that could protect people from being infected. 

On June 23rd from 11:30am-12:30pm Dr. Jennifer Gomez of Wayne State University will host a webinar, “Anti-Black Violence & The University: How Institutional Courage Can Pave The Way For True Equality in Academia”

Jennifer Gomez, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child & Family Development at Wayne State University

You can join the meeting here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82612841714?pwd=TFRyekdSSS9IZGc3OFN0cC9Ib1BlZz09 Meeting ID: 826 1284 1714 Password: 223199

Three UK Department of Surgery researchers, Dr. Hiroshi Saito, Dr. Marlene Starr, and Dr. Dongfang Wang, were again named Wethington Award recipients for 2020.

Wethington Awards, administered and funded by the College of Medicine’s Dean’s Office, annually recognizes the achievements of UK research faculty in securing major grants and support for their clinical and scientific research endeavors. 

All three researchers have been multiple year recipients of Wethington Awards.

Jun 12, 2020 - Unfortunately, due to the COVID19 outbreak, we had to hold our fellowship graduation virtually. It was a lot of work to organize, but the final result was marvelous. It still cannot replace gathering in person, but may be we can try to do it next year seeing every graduating general cardiology fellow is doing a sub-specialty fellowship next year.

A great gathering of fellows, faculty, staff, families, and friends at our 2020 Fellowship Graduation Zoom Party.

Feb 14, 2020 - SCMR was held in Orlando FL this year. Our fellows had the opportunity to present their posters. For such a specialized meeting, we had quite a UK reunion/gathering. It is always nice to catch up over dinner.

Drs. Steve Leung (CV 2010), George Lolay (IM 2016), Arash Seratnahaei (IM 2016, CV/ACI 2016), Michael Mikolaj (CV/ACI 2016) sat together at one of the SCMR sessions.

Dr. Waiel Abusnina (ACI 2020) presents his poster on MINOCA.

Dr. Teresa Ratajczak (ACI 2020) presents her interesting case

Oct 12, 2019 - Kentucky Chapter of American College of Cardiology held its annual meeting in the Lexington Convention Center this year. This was well attended by UK faculty and fellows. The fellows had the opportunity to interact with fellows from University of Louisville, and Bowling Green. They were able to present their research, getting advice from recent grads, and compete in the annual KY ACC Jeopardy.

Dr. Marcus Stoddard (U of L) teaches fellows (Waiel Abusnina, Teresa Ratajczak ACI 2020) how to acquire various views with the transthoracic echo probe.

June 7, 2019 - This year, we celebrated the graduation of 6 general cardiology fellows, 2 advanced imaging fellows, 2 interventional fellows, and an advanced heart failure fellow. We were fortunate to celebrate with family and friends together at the Hillary Boone Center.

2019 Graduates with Dr. Vincent Sorrell

Dr. Mikel Smith gave us all a history lesson about the Michael Spain Award and Borys Surawicz Award.