Medical center people

First-year medical student Cheri Blauwet was selected by a national advisory committee of the American Association of People with Disabilities to receive a Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award. Blauwet, a paraplegic since the age of 1, is a world-class athlete and a coach for youth with disabilities. A four-time Paralympic medal winner and international wheelchair racer, Blauwet has worked extensively in adaptive athletics. She plans to become a developmental pediatrician and to continue working with the International Institute for Disability Advocacy, which she founded. The award was established in 1999 by the Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation. To date, 34 awards of $10,000 have been granted to extraordinary individuals to further their work. Blauwet and two other 2003 winners will be honored at AAPD’s Washington, D.C., leadership gala in March.

Irving L. Weissman, MD, the Karel and Avice Beekhuis Professor in Cancer Biology, has won the National Academy of Sciences 2004 Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal, which is awarded every three years. Weissman was chosen for "his seminal studies that defined the physical properties, purification and growth regulation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cells." In 1998 Hugh O. McDevitt, professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine, won the award, which was established in 1952 by Michael Kovalenko. Weissman will receive a medal and a $25,000 prize at the NAS annual meeting in April in Washington, D.C.  

Emmy W. Verschuren, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar, was awarded a three-year fellowship by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. The award recognizes young scientists researching cancer and its causes, therapies and prevention. Verschuren, sponsored by Peter K. Jackson, PhD, associate professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology, received the fellowship for her project titled "Emi1 regulation of the anaphase-promoting complex: defining a proteolytic switch controlling the proliferation/differentiation decision."

Ira D. Glick, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant for lecturing in the medical sciences overseas. Glick, whose research focuses on schizophrenia and mood disorders, will lecture in psychiatry and psychopharmacology through July at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India. Stine Sophia Korreman and Karin Berit Petersson received Fulbright Scholar grants for research at the Stanford School of Medicine. Korreman, a scientist from The National University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark, is conducting research in the Department of Radiation Oncology, division of radiation physics. Petersson, a doctoral candidate from the Center for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Lund, Sweden. is working in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.