Advances in Translational Medicine Research

Dr. Ghali is Professor of Medicine at Mercer University. He is the Associate Chair for Clinical Research and Chief of Cardiology. He received his MD degree from Damascus University in Syria. He is board certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular medicine. As principal investigator, Dr. Ghali has conducted over 200 clinical trials predominantly in heart failure and has contributed to the medical literature more than 200 publications, predominantly in the field of heart failure. He has served as a member of several steering committees, adjudication committees and data and safety monitoring boards in various heart failure trials. He came to Mercer from Detroit where he held the positions of Director of Cardiovascular clinical trials and the heart failure program at the Cardiovascular Institute, Detroit Medical Center, Chief of Cardiology, Detroit Receiving Hospital and Associate Chair for Research at Wayne State University.

Dr. Wilbert S. Aronow MD is Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College/Westchester Medical Center, Valhalla, NY, USA. Dr. Aronow received his MD from Harvard Medical School. He has edited 14 books and is author or co-author of 1,498 papers, 358 commentaries or Letters to the Editor, and 1,034 abstracts and is presenter or co-presenter of 1,396 talks at meetings. Dr. Aronow is a Fellow of the ACC, the AHA, the ACP, the ACCP, the AGS (Founding Fellow of Western Section), and the GSA. He has been a member of 132 editorial boards of medical journals, editor-in-chief of 2 journals, co-editor of 2 journals, deputy editor of 1 journal, executive editor of 2 journals, associate editor for 9 journals, and guest editor for 7 other medical journals. He has received each year from 2001-2015 an outstanding teacher and researcher award from the medical residents and from 2001-2015 from the cardiology fellows at Westchester Medical Center/New York Medical College. He has received awards from the Society of Geriatric Cardiology, the Gerontological Society of America, New York Medical College including the 2014 Chancellor’s Research Award, the F1000 Faculty Member of the Year Award for the Faculty of Cardiovascular Disorders in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015, the Walter Bleifeld Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to clinical research from the International Academy of Cardiology in July, 2010, and a Distinguished Fellowship Award from the International Academy of Cardiology in July, 2012. He has been a member of 4 national guidelines committees including being a coauthor of the 2010 AMDA guidelines for heart failure, co-chair and first author of the 2011 ACC/AHA expert consensus document on hypertension in the elderly, coauthor of the 2015 AHA/ACC/ASH scientific statement on treatment of hypertension in patients with coronary artery disease, and is currently a member of the writing group of the ACC/AHA guideline for the management of patients with hypertension. He was a coauthor of a 2015 position paper from the International Lipid Expert Forum. He was a consultant to the ACP Information and Educational Resource (PIER) on the module of aortic stenosis. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the ASPC, and a member of the ACCP Cardiovascular Medicine and Surgery Network Steering Committee.

Dr. Samady is Professor of Medicine and Director of Interventional Cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine. He was trained in general cardiology, nuclear cardiology and interventional cardiology at Yale University School of Medicine from 1994 to 1999. Dr. Samady was Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of Virginia from 1999-2003 and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School from 2003-2005. He joined the Division of Cardiology at Emory University in 2005. In 2009, he became Professor of Medicine and in 2011, Director of Interventional Cardiology at Emory University. He has supervised and participated in the training of over 60 interventional cardiology fellows and over 100 general cardiology fellows. He has received several outstanding teaching awards. Dr. Samady has an actively funded clinical and translational research program (including National Institute of Health, the American Heart Association as well as industry sponsored studies) to investigate 1) hemodynamic mechanisms associated with progression of human coronary atherosclerosis 2) evaluation of pharmaceutical agents for treatment of coronary microvascular disease, endothelial dysfunction, coronary vasospasm and non-obstructive atherosclerosis 3) biomechanics of permanent and bioresorbable coronary vascular devices. These programs involve collaborations with Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory Vascular Biology and Emory Mathematics and Computer Science.

Dr. Alaa A Abd-Elsayed graduated from Assiut medical school in Egypt in 2000, and joined the faculty at the Department of Public Health and biostatistics immediately after graduation, got his master degree in 2006. Dr.Elsayed then moved to USA in 2008 to do a clinical research fellowship at the Anesthesiology Department at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr.Elsayed then joined the Anesthesiology Department at the University of Cincinnati where he had his anesthesiology and Pain Medicine training.In 2014 Dr. A Abd-Elsayed joined the Anesthesiology Department at the university of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor. During his career he earned several grants, published more than 60 peer reviewed manuscripts and case reports, several editorials and book chapters. He also had more than 70 international and national presentations at conferences, earned more than 15 awards at the state and national levels. He serves as a reviewer and editor for several journals.

Dr. Somjot S. Brar is the Director of Vascular and Endovascular Medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles, and serves as the Associate Program Director for the fellowship in Cardiovascular Diseases. Dr. Brar is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA. He chairs the Regional Research Committee for the Kaiser Permanente Southern California region, and is experienced in scientific programming, including the use of R, Python, SAS, and Stata. He performs coronary, peripheral, aortic, and structural endovascular procedures.

Dr. Norman H L Chiu completed his Ph.D. study which focused on the development of a new sensitive reporting label for immunoassays and nucleic acid hybridization assays under the supervision of Professor Theodore K. Christopoulos at the University of Windsor, Canada. After his Ph.D. study, Dr. Chiu had joined the founding member of the Human Genome Project, Professor Charles R. Cantor, as a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Advanced Biotechnology in Boston University. Most of his training with Professor Cantor was carried at a global biotechnology company called Sequenom Inc. Since 2001, Dr. Chiu has become a faculty and his research program has focused on the development of new analytical methods for measuring various biomarkers. Dr. Chiu has published a number of high impact articles in PNAS, Nucleic Acids Research, Journal of Proteome Research, Analytical Chemistry, etc. He has been invited to chair a number of sessions in conferences, including the recent international annual conference for the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and PITTCON. Dr. Chiu is also an affiliate faculty member at the newly established Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at UNCG.

Dr. Jason Wang, Ph.D. is the Senior Director of Evaluation, Research and Analysis for Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr.Wang has extensive experience in healthcare, health equity, and health economics research. Dr. Wang has a Ph.D. in Economics (Econometrics; Game Theory) from Stony Brook University. He has over 20 years of statistical analysis and SAS programming experience. Dr. Wang has over 50 peer-reviewed publications in world class scholarly journals. His recent publications focus on population health, quality improvement, health economics, Electronic Health Records (EHR) and related fields.

Dr. Lucia Anna Maria Potenza is working as Professor of Biochemistry at University of Urbino, Italy. Dr. Potenza has worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre of Protein Biochemistry and at the Institute of Biochemistry, University of Urbino. She completed her PhD from University of Rome, she also worked as Professor of Animal Biology at the faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Urbino. She has participated to over 80 scientific meetings, national and international; she presented scientific contributions published in the proceedings. Her scientific activity has concerned with Effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields on different cellular systems; Quantitative and qualitative mitochondrial DNA analyses in cellular systems in oxidative stress condition, etc.

Dr. Rafael Gonzalez-Alvarez is working as Professor from Department of Medicine, Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Dr. Gonzalez-Alvarez completed his Masters and PhD in Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon. He also worked as was Professor at the Higher Education Institute of Monterrey Campus Guadalajara. His research interests include: Discovery of new genes and its transcripts in non-human primates to infer their phylogenetic relationship with their human counterparts; Discovery of new biomarkers as new early diagnostic tools for breast cancer.

Prof. Sidhartha Ray is Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in College of Pharmacy, Natural & Health Sciences at Manchester University, USA. He joined the Pharmacy Program in May 2011, and served as the founding chair of the department of pharmaceutical sciences. He teaches a wide range of biomedical science and Integrated Therapeutic courses and serves on various academic committees. Prior to MUCOP, he was a professor of toxicology at the Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences of Long Island University. Dr. Ray's areas of research interests include mechanisms of cell death (apoptosis, necrosis; apocrosis/ necraptosis); Role of oxidative stress in drug-induced organ injury; Role of microRNA during apoptotic and necrotic cell deaths in target organs in vivo; Anti-cancer, anti-toxic and medicinal properties of phytochemicals; Role of complex mixture of Phytochemicals and Nutraceuticals in health, wellness and nutrition.

Dr. Padmalayam is working as Senior Scientist from Drug Discovery Division at Southern Research Institute. She joined Southern Research in August 2010 and currently serves in multiple roles, including Program Manager of the Strategic Initiatives Plan (SIP), an internal research funding program, and Head of the Assay Development/Lead Generation Laboratory. Her laboratory provides research support for various drug discovery programs at Southern Research which span a broad range of therapeutic areas such as oncology, infectious, neurodegenerativeand metabolic diseases. Dr. Padmalayam obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta in 1996. Dr. Padmalayam’s dissertation research, conducted as a collaborative project with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and GSU, focused on investigating the pathogenic mechanisms employed by the Bartonella species and identifying key proteins that are involved in the infection process. She continued her postdoctoral work at the Division of Viral and Ricketssial Diseases at the CDC, conducting further investigations into the pathogenesis of bartonellae and their interactions with host cells during infection. In 2001, Dr. Padmalayam joined Reddy US (RUS) Therapeutics, Inc., a drug discovery company based in Norcross, GA. While at RUS, her research focus shifted to metabolic diseases, and she identified a novel mitochondrial target gene that plays a key role in metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. As a project leader for this program, she directed the project from target identification/validation stages to the lead optimization stage.

Dr. Dongming Hou is working as an Associate Professor from Department of Pharmacy Practice, Mercer University, Georgia and also working as Visiting Professor in Cardiology in Harbin Medical University & Tongji University, China. From 1998-2001 he worked as Cardiology Fellow, Krannert Institute of Cardiology, Indiana University School of Medicine, USA. From 2001-2007 he worked as an Assistant Professor, Krannert Institute of Cardiology, Indiana University School of Medicine, USA. From 2007-2011 he worked as Director of Fellowship Program & Senior Scientist Saint Joseph's Hospital Atlanta/Saint Joseph's Translational Research Institute, USA. His research interest includes but not limited cell therapy, cardiovascular implantable devices, vascular imaging, invasive and non-invasive coronary physiology, endothelial function evaluation, vascular healing response to implanted devices, and structure heart devices.

Dr. Hong Duck Kim is working as an Associate Professor in Environmental Health Science Department at New York Medical College, USA. Dr. Kim earned PhD degree study on multidrug resistance in the cancer chemotherapy under the supervision of Professor T. Tsuruo at the University of Tokyo (1996). He worked on the molecular characterization of the postsynaptic density protein PSD-95 during postdoctoral fellow at National Institute of Bioscience and Human Technology, (AIST, Japan1997-1999). His profound effort and accomplishment regarding synapse turnover in the neural network of hippocampus was fruited in the publication on Nature Neuroscience (1999). During post-doctoral training in USA, Dr. Kim worked in the study of the immunology of pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines in elderly at the University of Rochester. He subsequently moved to the field of neuropathology where he did contribution to prevention Alzheimer disease using DNA vaccine and/or clearance of unfolded protein using microglia cell mediated machinery against amyloid beta protein or delivered potential neutralizing antigen by gene therapy such as adenoviral (AdV) or AAV-vector based at University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of Illinois at Peoria.

Dr. Hargsoon Yoon is an Associate Professor in Department of Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering Program at Norfolk State University, Virginia and Dr. Yoon is also working as Adjunt Associate Professor in Department of Anatomy and Pathology at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Dr. Hargsoon Yoon earned his Ph.D. degree in Engineering Science from Pennsylvania State University in 2003. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics from Yonsei University, South Korea. His research interests include Development of neural sensing devices using nanotechnology and opto-electronic sensing principles; Functional imaging of neural activity in the brain using Electrical Impedance Tomography; Wearable neural sensing systems measuring hemodynamic neural activity; Analysis of electrochemical-mechanical coupling between neural sensing electrodes and brain tissue under micromotion.

Dr. Qi-Huang Zheng, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Director of PET Radiochemistry in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Zheng has received his B.S. (Chemistry, 1980-1984) and M.S. (Organic Chemistry, 1984-1987) from Xiamen University, China, and Ph.D. (Organic Chemistry, 1987-1990) from Zhongshan University, China. Dr. Zheng has pursued his postdoctoral research first at University of Chicago (Organic Chemistry, 1994), then at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (Organic Chemistry, 1994), and eventually at Indiana University (Radiochemistry, 1995-1997). His research interests are design, synthesis and biological evaluation of new radiopharmaceuticals (tumor, brain and heart imaging agents) for use in the biomedical imaging technique positron emission tomography (PET) to study cancer, neuroscience and cardiovascular diseases. His research activities focus on the development of novel and potent enzyme-, receptor- and transporter-based PET carbon-11 and fluorine-18 radiotracers for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of physiologic changes in vivo, from initial evaluation in cell and animal models to evaluation in clinical trials. His research activities also include development, automation and production of PET radiotracers for preclinical and clinical applications. He has received the China Young Chemist Prize in 1991; China Guangdong Province Science and Technology Progress Achievement Award in 1995; Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters Most Cited Paper 2006-2009 Award in 2009; and Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters Outstanding Reviewer Award in 2015. He is serving as a Senior Editorial/Editorial Board Member in 19 scientific journals, an abstract reviewer for the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) Annual Meeting, a manuscript reviewer for more than 60 scientific journals and a grant reviewer for more than 10 grant agencies/foundations. He has published over 300 research and review articles, meeting abstracts, and book chapters.

Dr. Ildiko Bock-Marquette is working as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Clinical Chemistry, University of Pecs. Dr. Bock-Marquette worked as an Assistant Professor, Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Department of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas. She received several honors and grant awards which include: Outstanding Publisher Award, National Excellence Award, OTKA-K Award, Szentagothai advanced scientist Award, etc.