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.

May 29, 2019 - The 2019 Bruce Challenge was held in our stress lab. Fellows an faculty participated. Everyone passed the 10 minute mark. Heart failure specialist Dr. Andrew Kolodziej blew everyone out of the water with an 8-stage completion!

Group pic for the 2019 Bruce Challenge

Julie (Chief fellow, CV 2020) was getting warmed up.

Mar 19, 2019 - The American College of Cardiology 68th Annual Scientific Meeting was held in New Orleans this year. Our fellows had 8 poster presentations. We had a grand time seeing old friends, and newly matched fellow. The UK fellows, faculty and staff gathered at Emeril's Delmonico for a wonderful dinner.

Interventional fellow Bennet George (UK cards fellow 2018) presents his poster which won Best Poster Award. His second ACC Best Poster Award during fellowship.

On Monday, June 15, 2020 Jeff Chen successfully defended his dissertation and earned his PhD.

"Involvement of the Renin Angiotensin System in Marfan Syndrome Associated Thoracic Aortic Aneurysms"

Doctoral Committee

Dr. Alan Daughety
Department of Physiology, Mentor

Dr. Ken Campbell
Department of Physiology

Dr. Ming Gong
Department of Physiology

Dr. Nancy Webb
Department of Pharmacology & Nutritional Sciences

Outside Examiner, Dr. Vincent Venditto
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences