2 i4Kids Members Receive Ascending Star Award!
2 i4Kids members, Tim Hand, PhD, and Amy Hartman, PhD received the Health Sciences Ascending Star Award from the University of Pittsburgh!
The Health Sciences Ascending Star Award recognizes highly productive and creative mid-career faculty members in the six Schools of the Health Sciences. Hand and Hartman were two out of five chosen of all the faculty in the six schools this year for the award. It is accompanied by $25,000 for research support and an invitation to give a lecture during this year. This award is just one tangible way in which the university can recognize the excellence of faculty members whose career trajectories continue to offer great promise and to encourage them to continue that upward momentum, while also serving as role models and mentors to their junior colleagues.
Hand received his PhD in immunology from Yale University and followed that with a postdoctoral position at the National Institutes of Health. Hand formed the Immunity to Bacterial Colonization Lab at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in 2005, where he investigates how host/microbiota interactions shape a variety of intestinal diseases. His lecture will take place on Thursday, July 18 at 3:30pm in Alan Magee Scaife Hall, room 3785.
Hartman, who earned her PhD from Pitt in 2003, completed her postdoctoral training at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying the Ebola virus. As an associate professor also in the Center for Vaccine Research, her research goal is to understand how emerging mosquito-transmitted viruses, like the Rift Valley fever virus, cause disease. She and her team decipher the mechanisms of understudied disease outcomes, like encephalitis or fetal infection during pregnancy, to advance the development of vaccines and therapeutics. Her lecture will take place Friday, November 1 at 3:30pm in Alan Magee Scaife Hall, room 3785.