What's on my mind this month is the implementation of new policies governing physician/industry relationships. By now you have received a letter from me and a copy of the new policies entitled "University of Maryland School of Medicine Policies Supporting Professionalism and Education in Medicine Relative to Limitations of Gifts and Interactions with Industry."

As I stated in my letter, these new policies, which are consistent with the recommendations of the Association of American Medical Colleges Task Force, are the result of extensive discussions and thoughtful consideration by our faculty. These policies have been approved by both the School of Medicine Executive Committee and School of Medicine Council. They also were adopted by the Medical Staff Organization at the University of Maryland Medical Center. We are among the first 25 academic medical centers in the nation to pass such guidelines, and, as such, are leaders in this field.

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Angela Brodie, PhD

Angela Brodie, PhD, professor, Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and Program in Oncology, was the Harold L. Stewart Lecturer at the Uniform Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD, in November 2008.

H. Richard Alexander, MD

H. Richard Alexander, MD, professor, Department of Surgery and Program in Oncology, was an invited visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital during grand rounds in November 2008. During his visit, Dr. Alexander also presented a lecture entitled “Can Surgeons Succeed as Scientists?”at the Zane Cohen Lecture.

Margaret Chesney, PhD

Margaret Chesney, PhD, professor, Department of Medicine, and associate director, Center for Integrative Medicine, presented a lecture entitled “Health Psychology Meets Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine: Is There Common Ground?” at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center in January 2009. The audience was mostly psychologists, but some psychiatrists and health service researchers also attended.

Andrew Goldberg, MD

Andrew Goldberg, MD, professor, Department of Medicine, and head, Division of Gerontology, presented a talk entitled “Role of Exercise in Treatment and Prevention of Diabetes in the Elderly” during grand rounds at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, MD, in October 2008.

Shannon Takala, PhD

Shannon Takala, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine and Center for Vaccine Development, gave an invited talk in a symposium entitled “Artemisinin Resistance Confirmation, Characterization and Containment in Southeast Asia” at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans, LA, in December 2008. Dr. Takala’s colleague, Christopher Plowe, MD, MPH, professor, Department of Medicine, and chief, Center for Vaccine Development Malaria Section, chaired the symposium. Additionally, Dr. Plowe gave an invited talk in another symposium entitled “Global Strategies for Using Antimalarial Drugs: Making the Most of a Precious Resource.”

Victoria Wilson, MSW

Victoria Wilson, MSW, adjunct assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry, and clinical director of the Division of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry’s Medical Crisis Counseling Center, gave an invited talk entitled “Coping with Chronic Illness” at the Overview of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Conference sponsored by the Maryland/Delaware Chapter of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America in Baltimore, in November 2008.

Lixing Lao, PhD

Lixing Lao, PhD, professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine, and director, Traditional Chinese Medicine Research, Center for Integrative Medicine, presented a lecture entitled “Evidence-Based Medicine in Traditional Chinese Medicine” for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s Education Series on Complementary and Integrative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, MD, in January 2009.

Pincoffs Lecture in Medicine

The Department of Medicine presented its 52nd Annual Pincoffs Lecture in Medicine in Davidge Hall in December 2008. The keynote speaker, Allen C. Steere, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of Clinical and Translational Research in Rheumatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, lectured on the topic “The Lyme Disease Controversy,” which discounts the ideology of a counterculture that attributes pain, neurocognitive and fatigue symptoms to chronic Lyme disease. Dr. Steere identified the disease in 1977 with his colleagues at Yale and later named it after the small coastal town of Lyme, CT, where clusters of the disease first brought it to the attention of researchers. The Pincoffs Lecture in Medicine is named in honor of Dr. Maurice Pincoffs, the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine from 1922 to 1954.

John Sorkin, MD, PhD

John Sorkin, MD, PhD, associate professor, Department of Medicine, presented a talk entitled “Statistical Basis for Biomedical Investigation” during grand rounds at the University of Maryland Medical Center in November 2008.

Aderonke Falayi, MD

Aderonke Falayi, MD, instructor, Department of Psychiatry, participated in the Nigerian Leadership Initiative Residential Seminar as a Future Leader. This was an invitation-only, three-day seminar held in Lagos, Nigeria, in order to enhance leadership skills and influence the future development of the Nigerian society.

Paul A. Welling, MD

Paul A. Welling, MD, professor, Department of Physiology, was an invited symposium speaker, presenting “How Potassium Channels Find Their Way in Membrane Traffic” at the 9th Colloque Canax Ionique in Presquile de Gien, France, in October 2008. Additionally, Dr. Welling presented “Golgi Arrest in Inherited Potassium Channelopathies” at the American Society of Nephrology’s Advances in Research Conference—Human Disorders of Protein Processing: Mechanisms, Consequences and Therapeutic Implications in Philadelphia, PA, in November 2008.

Richard Y. Zhao, PhD

Richard Y. Zhao, PhD, associate professor, Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology and Institute of Human Virology, was invited to give a plenary lecture on “Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a Model Organism for Apoptosis-induced HIV-1 Viral Protein R” at the 6th International Conference on Yeast Apoptosis, which will be held in Leuven, Belgium, in June 2009.

The Department of Pathology’s Division of Molecular Pathology

Richard N. Pierson III, MD

Richard N. Pierson III, MD, professor, Department of Surgery, and director, Surgical Care Clinical Center, Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System, was the Lower Visiting Professor at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, VA, in March 2009. This visiting professorship honors the memory of heart transplant pioneer Richard Lower, MD, who worked closely with fellow heart transplant pioneer Norman Shumway, MD, to develop the technique of orthotopic heart transplantation, and then went on to head one of the first successful heart transplant programs in the world, based in Richmond. Dr. Pierson presented “Current Status of Xenotransplantation,” which ia also scheduled to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In addition, he has been invited to serve on an FDA panel on islet and hepatocyte xenotransplantation, which will convene in Washington, DC, in May 2009.

Mark Rizzo, PhD

Olga B. Ioffe MD

Olga B. Ioffe MD, associate professor, Department of Pathology and Program in Oncology, gave an invited lecture on cervical pathology at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan, in October 2008. Dr. Ioffe’s lecture was entitled “Update on Diagnosis of Endocervical Glandular Lesions.”

Devinder Singh, MD

Devinder Singh, MD, joined the Department of Surgery in October 2008 as an assistant professor. He was born and raised in Baltimore. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University, his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and completed a combined general surgery and plastic sur-gery residency at Yale University School of Medicine. He is interested in the full spectrum of cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery, including facial cosmetic surgery, breast augmentation, breast reconstruction, breast reduction, breast lifting, liposuction, injectable skin fillers, endoscopic carpal tunnel release, complex abdominal hernia repair and body contouring after massive weight loss. His original scientific research on body contouring was presented at regional and national meetings, and he was awarded the Yale Plastic Surgery Research Prize for developing a new approach to treat obstructive nasal air passages during rhinoplasty (nose surgery). While training, he traveled to Brazil and Miami, Florida, to gain experience in modern trends within cosmetic surgery. Additionally, he spent further elective time at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York, where he studied breast reconstruction, including microsurgical techniques required for perforator flaps. In his free time, he has traveled to both Thailand and Honduras on pro bono reconstructive surgery trips to treat children afflicted with cleft lip and/or cleft palate and various congenital hand disorders. He is dedicated to his patients’ safety, to the education of students and residents and to the continuation of research efforts to help advance the field of plastic surgery.

Archana Leon-Guerrero, MD

Archana Leon-Guerrero, MD, joined the Department of Psychiatry in August 2008 as an assistant professor. Dr. Leon-Guerrero also will serve as the director of Adult Psychiatry. Dr. Leon-Guerrero completed her undergraduate and medical degrees at Northwestern University. Her postgraduate training included an internship at Oregon Health Sciences University Hospital, a psychiatry residency at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center and proctorship in addictions at the University of Washington. She is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Following completion of her training, she moved to Guam where she established a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic that provided culturally diverse mental health and substance abuse services to the local multi-ethnic and indigenous population. In this capacity she dealt with the emotional sequelae of several catastrophic typhoons, an earthquake and a plane crash. Also while in Guam she served as the interim medical director of the Guam Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, as a consulting psychiatrist at the US Veterans Affairs Clinic and Naval Hospital and as a volunteer at the Salvation Army Lighthouse Recovery Center, a substance abuse rehabilitation program. She returned to the United States in 2007 as the chief of service of the newly opened Fenton Unit at Sheppard Pratt Health Systems in Ellicott City. Dr. Leon-Guerrero has extensive experience training a wide range of personnel and lists among her areas of interest dual diagnosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, serious mental illness, mood/anxiety disorders, chronic pain disorders, neuropsychiatry/sleep disorders, consultation/liaison and emergency and forensic/correctional psychiatry. In addition to these professional activities she has been a troop leader for the Guam Girl Scouts, a solo violinist in the Guam Symphony Society and a board member of the Guam Territorial Band Society.

Emily Joe Stein, MD

Emily Joe Stein, MD, joined the Department of Anesthesiology in September 2008 as an assistant professor. Previously, Dr. Stein worked as an interventional pain medicine specialist in private practice in Austin, Texas. She completed her anesthesiology residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and is board certified in anesthesiology. Dr. Stein completed her fellowship in pain medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her special interests are spine intervention, discography and spinal cord stimulation.