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Congratulations to Dr. Venkat Subramanian on receiving an American Heart Association Beginning Grant in Aid. The two year $132,000 award started on January 1, 2013 and is titled "Role of macrophage-specific calpain in hypercholesterolemia-induced atherosclerosis."

Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director presenting Brandon Fornwalt with the National Institutes of Health Director's Early Independence Award plaque. Photo was provided by the National Institutes of Health. The Early Independence Award was presented in December. Dr. Fornwalt’s project title is “Exploring the role of dyssynchrony in pediatric heart disease with MRI.”

Gill Heart and Saha CVRC featured on UK at the Half with UK Football Game.

Happy New Year
The Center Leadership and Administrative Staff would like to thank everyone that worked with the Center over the last year.  We had a successful year with many great invited speakers, research accomplishments and quality student teaching.  All of these items will provide for future individual and collaborative success.  The creative environment nurtured by our faculty and staff is an asset that ultimately leads to high rates of publications, grants, and honors.  Congratulations to everyone!

Congratulations to the newest American Heart Association grant recipients:
Hongmei Ren, Beginning Grant in Aid
Binggang Xiang, Post Doctoral Fellowship
Fanmuyi Yang, Predoctoral Fellowship

Dr. Mikel Smith appointed to Mazzoleni Chair
The Mazzoleni Endowed professorship is the first true teaching professorship in the Division of Cardiology.  Smith presently serves as Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the UK HealthCare Gill Heart Institute Echocardiography Laboratory. The endowment will provide support to Dr. Smith through the funding of activities related directly to continued education of the appointed professor and his/her staff. "Dr. Smith is without a doubt the right choice to serve as the first Mazzoleni Endowed Professor. Like Dr. Mazzoleni, he has dedicated his career not just to excellent clinical care, but to ensuring the future of medicine in Kentucky by training decades’ worth of students and young physicians," said Dr. David J. Moliterno, chief of the UK Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and Medical Director of the Gill Heart Institute.
Read more about this here.

Congratulations to Dr. Sibu Saha as the recipient of the Abraham Flexner Master Educator Award
October 23, 2010.  Today the University of Kentucky,  College of Medicine Academic Convocation and Awards Day, awarded Dr. Sibu Saha one of the oldest peer reviewed medical school awards in the country.

UK Alert Announcement of Enhancements
In an effort to better serve the campus community, UK has recently made enhancements to UK Alert, primarily related to the recipient registration process.   The enhanced UK Alert system now allows for all UK students, faculty, and staff to be automatically enrolled with their official university e-mail address. There is no longer a need for UK students, faculty, and staff to create and remember a separate username and password for UK Alert.    To access your UK Alert account, you simply need to go to myUK (https://myuk.uky.edu/irj/portal) and click on the UK Alert tab.  We worked with UK's IT department to match all previous registrants in the UK Alert system to UK IDs and then transfer the associated data.  To ensure that your data was transferred correctly we ask that you take a few minutes to update your UK Alert account at myUK (https://myuk.uky.edu/irj/portal).

Saha CVRC Core Faculty receive recognition in their scientific community by recent appointments
Nancy Webb
    Vice Chair - ATVB Women¹s Leadership Committee
    Vice Chair - AHA Great Rivers Affiliate Research Committee
    Editorial Board - Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology
    Editorial Board - Journal of Lipid Research
Zhenheng Guo
    Member - AHA study Section; Vascular Wall Biology AAGI 2 Committee
Manikandan Panchatcharam
    Member - AHA Study Section; Vascular Wall Biology AAGI BSc1
Alan Daugherty
    Editorial Board - Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology
    Charter Member - NIH Study Section;  Atherosclerosis and Inflammation in  Cardiovascular Systems

Congratulations to the American Heart Association grant recipients, July 2010
Andres Chang- Biochemistry - AHA Great Rivers, Pre doctoral Fellowship
Perry Dotson - Physiology - AHA Great Rivers, Post doctoral Fellowship
Mellani Lefta- Physiology - AHA Great Rivers, Pre doctoral Fellowship
Shu Liu - Internal Medicine - AHA Great Rivers, Post doctoral Fellowship
Manikandan Panchatcharam - Internal Medicine - AHA National, Scientist Development Grant
Aruna Poduri - Internal Medicine - AHA Great Rivers, Post doctoral Fellowship
Hongmei Ren - Internal Medicine - AHA Great Rivers, Post doctoral Fellowship
Tao Wu - Internal Medicine - AHA Great Rivers, Post doctoral Fellowship

Applied Cardiovascular Biology - Call for Abstracts deadline: April 15, 2010

Call for UK CCTS Spring Conference Abstracts
Deadline for Abstract Submission, 02/17/2010
Abstracts may be submitted on any aspect of clinical health-related research, including: basic research with animal models of clinical disease and/or with human tissue; clinical research that involves human subjects; health-related clinical, epidemiological and/or community-based research; outcomes research; health services research; and behavioral science investigations. Preclinical research designed to inform clinical translational research is also permitted.

Congratulations to Hongmei Ren receiving the Second Place Prize at the University of Kentucky, College of Medicine 3rd Annual Postdoctoral Poster Session sponsored by the Postdoctoral Advisory Committee.  The Session occurred on December 9, 2009.  Dr. Ren is a member of the Andrew Morris laboratory.  All the prizes are shown here:

The University of Kentucky today enacts a campuswide tobacco-free policy, taking a leading role in creating a healthier Kentucky.  This policy's implementation coincides with the American Cancer Society's 34th Great American Smokeout.
As the state's flagship university, UK believes in a healthy environment for all members of the campus community. The tobacco-free policy places a priority on employees, guests and students by providing a healthy, tobacco-free environment and decreasing exposure to secondhand smoke.
This policy covers all university-controlled streets and sidewalks. For those sidewalks adjacent to streets not controlled by the university, UK asks that individuals respect the pedestrians and their efforts to provide a healthier environment by refraining from tobacco use on those sidewalks. The map with UK's tobacco-free boundaries can be found at: www.uky.edu/TobaccoFree.
With a great investment in its students, employees and visitors, UK offers many resources for those interested in quitting tobacco use. Among the resources UK offers are nicotine replacement therapy products, including patches and/or gum, at no cost to those students, faculty and staff (and their spouses or sponsored dependents) who are enrolled in and actively participate in one of the many UK-sponsored tobacco treatment programs.
Employees interested in an individual, low-pressure approach designed to encourage and assist you in becoming a non-smoker may take advantage of UK's Health and Wellness Program, BeHIP: Tobacco Cessation (http://www.uky.edu/HR/wellness/behipoverview.html). BeHIP is a phone-based, health coaching program.
UK also provides individual counseling sessions through the Internal Medicine Clinic with UK's tobacco treatment specialist, Audrey Darville (Contact information: audrey.darville@uky.edu) ARNP, CTTS. Employees can call (859) 323-4222 or (859) 323-0303 to schedule an appointment. Group counseling is also available. These services are part of UK HealthCare but also connected to the Tobacco Policy Research Program (http://www.mc.uky.edu/tobaccopolicy/) in the UK College of Nursing.
The office of UK Work + Life Connections (http://www.uky.edu/HR/WLC) offers assessments, brief counseling, education and referral free of charge to UK employees. Visits are limited to five times per year.
For employees, students and visitors who do not want to quit but need help to feel more comfortable at work or during class, nicotine replacement gum may be purchased in campus convenience stores, gift shops at UK Chandler and Good Samaritan hospitals, Kentucky Clinic Pharmacy, or University Health Service Pharmacy.  These locations, except for the hospital gift shops, also carry the nicotine patch. Some products are significantly less expensive than those found in commercial pharmacies.
A full list of resources for managing cravings or quitting tobacco use with reference to students, employees and the general public, along with information about UK's tobacco-free policy, is available at www.uky.edu/TobaccoFree.

Familiarize yourself with Code of Conduct Addendum On June 23, 2009, a new policy, Code of Conduct Addendum, Policy No. A01-015, was distributed for review. This addendum applies to all faculty, staff, house officers and students involved in the University of Kentucky health care-related activities, regardless of specific job duties or function. It is important that every employee read and abide by the guidelines set forth in this policy. UK HealthCare is in a delicate situation of working with industry to enhance and improve the tools of health care, while fulfilling an obligation to our patients and their families to provide care that is in their best interest, with no perception of bias or conflict of interest. The policy is available online at the Hospital Careweb website.