The first annual Anesthesiology Research Day was held on May 5, 2009 to highlight the significant research accomplishments of the Department. The day’s events began with a morning poster session.  Clinical and basic researchers presented 38 posters that were judged by four faculty researchers: Barbara W. Brandom, MD; Michael S. Gold, PhD; Gregg E. Homanics, PhD; and Jerome Parness, MD, PhD. The session also included healthcare simulation and patient safety technology demonstrations by Pitt bioengineering undergraduate design students who work with the Department’s Simulation Technology R&D Center.

Department Chair John P. Williams, MD gave opening remarks to officially kick off Research Day and to commence the oral presentations. The first keynote of the day was Patrick W. Mantyh, PhD, JD, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. Dr. Mantyh is nationally recognized for his research of chronic inflammatory nervous system and cancer-related pain. In his speech entitled Cancer Pain:  Causes, Consequences and Therapeutic Opportunities, Dr. Mantyh discussed his research involving nerve cell innervation of tissues in bone and pancreatic cancer, and how these nerve cells produce electrochemical signals that lead to inflammation and immune response in the affected tissues.

The second distinguished speaker was Alex S. Evers, MD, the Henry E. Mallinckrodt Professor and Chair of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine’s Department of Anesthesiology. In Dr. Evers’ talk Anesthetic Binding Sites: Approaches to Identification and Characterization, he discussed the work he has done to characterize the interaction of membrane proteins with anesthetic binding sites and the kinetics of anesthetic binding.

A series of shorter talks also highlighted various departmental research programs:
Steven A. Prescott, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor
Erica Schwartz, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate
Tomas Drabek, MD, Visiting Assistant Professor
Dan Willenbring PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar

At the conclusion of Research Day, Yan Xu, PhD, Vice Chair for Basic Research, presented awards for outstanding abstracts and posters to the following awardees:

Senior Scientist
First Place – Feng Dai, PhD, Assistant Professor
Second Place – Alon Ben-Ari, MD, Visiting Instructor

Junior Scientist
First Place – Pablo Brumovsky, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate
Second Place – Hui-Hua Li, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate
Third Place – Joseph S. Goode, Jr., MSN, CRNA, Nurse Anesthesia Program Faculty

Student (Clinical)
First Place – Sarah Faeder, PhD, Medical Student
Second Place – James Ibinson, MD, PhD, Anesthesiology Resident

Student (Basic)
First Place – Hilary Stevenson, Graduate Student
Second Place – Xianren Wu, MD, Anesthesiology Resident

Congratulations to all of our award winners! Full abstracts can be found on the Anesthesiology Research Day website, www.anes.upmc.edu/Research/ResearchDay09/home.html.

Dr. John P. Williams summed up the event; “It was terrifically gratifying to see the number and quality of the research projects being carried out by the Department.  I was very impressed with all of these young investigators and I now believe more firmly than ever that the future for the specialty is luminescent!  Many thanks to one and all for participating and one heck of a “very well done’ to you all.”