June faculty and staff features

Joann N. Bodurtha, M.D., M.P.H., professor, departments of Human and Molecular Genetics, Pediatrics, Obstetrics-Gynecology, Epidemiology and Community Health 

Bodurtha has been selected as a 2008-2009 fellow in the national Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program for women. Forty-eight senior female faculty from across the United States and Canada were selected.

Established in 1995, ELAM offers an intensive, one-year program of leadership training, with coaching, networking and mentoring opportunities aimed at expanding the national pool of qualified female candidates for leadership in academic medicine, dentistry and public health.

During their year with ELAM, fellows gain a broader and deeper knowledge of the challenges facing academic health centers through meetings with national leaders in the field, interactions with their peers in the program and interviews with a wide range of senior officers at their own institutions.

Bodurtha has worked to form communities more welcoming to disabled people and their families. She helped start the Masters in Genetic Counseling program at VCU in 1990 and the VaLEND (Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities) program in 1995.
 
Bodurtha has been responsible for VCU grant funding totaling more than $12 million. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Swarthmore College and Yale University, respectively. 

Danail Bonchev, Ph.D., VCU Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences
Bonchev, senior fellow and director of Networks and Pathways Research in the Center for the Study of Biological Complexity, VCU Life Sciences, and professor and director of research on bioinformatics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, won the best paper award from the International Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Informatics Discovery.

This is a single award selected from about a thousand papers published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society. Co-authors of the paper titled “Data-Driven Networking Reveals 5-Genes Signature for Early Detection of Lung Cancer," were Vladimir Kuznetsov, Ph.D., a leading scientist from the Bioinformatics Institute of Singapore, and Sterling Thomas, a doctoral student in VCU’s Integrative Life Sciences program. This year’s conference was held in Sanya, Hainan, China last month.