Established in 2022 by Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine, the Ascending Star Awards recognize highly productive and creative mid-career faculty with an award of $25,000. This year, two of the five awardees – Shari Rogal, MD, MPH, and Alison Kohan, PhD – were from the Department of Medicine.
Shari Rogal, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, surgery, and clinical and translational science in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, is a gastroenterologist and transplant hepatologist whose work focuses on identifying data-driven implementation strategies that address implementation barriers and applying these in clinical and public health settings to improve health care equity and quality. Dr. Rogal Co-Directs dissemination and implementation science core for the VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion and the Pitt Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Her research focuses on improving quality of life and symptom management for people with advanced liver disease and in the peritransplant period, as well as operations work focused on increasing the uptake of evidence-based treatments for HCV and cirrhosis using implementation science.
Dr. Rogal’s talk is scheduled for August 28 at 3:30 p.m. in Alan Magee Scaife Hall, room 3785.
Alison Kohan, PhD, associate professor of medicine and immunology in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, is an expert in the field of intestinal lipoproteins and their metabolism, as well as the interaction between chylomicron metabolism and inflammation. Dr. Kohan has made major contributions to understanding the role of chylomicron synthesis and secretion to metabolic and inflammatory disease. She has also pioneered the primary murine organoid model to study lipoprotein synthesis and secretion by enterocytes. Dr. Kohan’s long-term research goal is to identify and understand mechanisms of intestinal lipoprotein formation, intestinal lipoprotein regulation of immune cells during disease, and to determine how this intestinal lipoprotein/immune system interaction contributes to cardio-metabolic disease progression.
Dr. Kohan’s talk is scheduled for October 3 at 3:30 p.m. in Alan Magee Scaife Hall, room 3785.