This year’s Employee Service Awards and Faculty & Staff Recognition Ceremony will not be held as originally scheduled on Tuesday, March 31, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Plans are being re-evaluated.
In the meantime, The Pulse is continuing to spotlight some of the award recipients. (Others are a secret, and will remain so until a later date!)
Faculty researchers honored
Congratulations to this year’s winners of the Outstanding Faculty Research Award!
- Charles Thodeti, Ph.D. , associate professor in the Department of Integrative Medical Sciences and a scientist in the Heart and Blood Vessel Disease Research Focus Area
- Jesse Young, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and a scientist in the Musculoskeletal Biology Research Focus Area
The Outstanding Faculty Research Award honors a NEOMED faculty member who is an outstanding researcher in his or her field. The award focuses on nationally and internationally recognized excellence and productivity in research and the individual recognized should have contributed substantively to his or her field of research interest. The nature of the research may be basic, translational or clinically focused. The award may be presented to up to two faculty members.
Dr. Thodeti obtained his Ph.D. in Zoology (Physiology and Biochemistry) from S.V. University, India. He did post-doctoral training at Lund University, Sweden, and later held a research faculty position at the University of Copenhagen. Before joining NEOMED, Dr.Thodeti was an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Thodeti’s laboratory works on the mechanotransduction mechanisms in cardiac remodeling during heart failure and pathological angiogenesis in cancer and retinopathy. His research work has been supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (RO1, R15), National Cancer Institute (R15) and the American Heart Association (Grant-in-Aid). He has published around 60 peer-reviewed articles in the fields of cardiovascular physiology and filed 3 patents. He serves as an editorial board member for Circulation Research, Scientific Reports and Microcirculation.
Dr. Thodeti’s contributions to the research community have been recognized with the NEOMED Junior Faculty award in 2015; Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA) and the American Physiological Society (FAPS-CVS) beginning in 2016; and ASIOA’s Mario-Toppo distinguished Scientist in 2018. He presently serves as the Chair of FCVS committee of the APS-CV section. In February, Dr. Thodeti was elected president of the Association of Scientists of Indian Origin in America (ASIOA).
Dr. Young earned a Ph. D. in Anthropological Sciences from Stony Brook University in 2008. Prior to joining NEOMED, he completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. Research in Dr. Young’s lab focuses on evolutionary, comparative and developmental aspects of mammalian locomotion. Dr. Young describes his work as question-driven and concentrated on two topics: the biomechanics of arboreal locomotion, particularly in primates; and the interaction between musculoskeletal growth and locomotor development. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on mammalian growth, locomotor biomechanics, and associated topics, and is co-author of a book on neonatal primate anatomy that is currently in press.
Over the past decade, Dr. Young’s research has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation, including the Biological Anthropology program in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate and the Physiological Structure and Systems Cluster of the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems in the Biological Sciences Directorate. He was the recipient of the NEOMED Junior Faculty Award in 2014.
