November Faculty and Staff Features

Joseph P. Ornato, M.D., Professor and Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine

Ornato, operational medical director of both the Richmond Ambulance Authority and Richmond Fire and Emergency Medical Services, was recently awarded the 2011 Virginia Governor’s Award for outstanding EMS physician.

The Virginia Department of Health website says Ornato has “shaped the way pre-hospital lifesaving has occurred across the globe,” and that “his significant contributions to Virginia’s local, regional and state EMS system are exceptional and greatly valued by the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Ornato is one of the co-authors of the American Heart Association’s seminal “Chain of Survival.” He developed a pre-hospital therapeutic hypothermia treatment program for Richmond Ambulance Authority (RAA) that, when followed by sophisticated post-resuscitation care at VCU, allows for discharge of more than 40 percent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients who are neurologically intact, compared to the national survival rate of approximately six percent.  As a result of the program’s success in Richmond, many other EMS agencies are adopting the strategy, said Chip Decker, RAA CEO.

An active researcher in the field of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Ornato is an editor of the journal “Resuscitation” and is on the editorial board of the “American Journal of Emergency Medicine”. He is past chairman of the American Heart Association's (AHA) National Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee and its Advanced Cardiac Life Support Subcommittee. He served as the AHA’s national representative to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's National Heart Attack Alert Program's Coordinating Committee and Chairman of its Science Base Subcommittee.

Ornato served on the triage medical team at Greenwich and Beach Streets in New York City for the first 12 hours after the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Colin Banas, M.D., Chief Medical Information Officer

Banas was recently named one of the top 25 clinical informaticists in the country. Editors at health care news provider “Modern Healthcare” chose the honorees based on three criteria: use of patient-care data to improve his or her organization’s clinical and financial performance, willingness to share expertise with others in the field of clinical informatics and leadership in clinical informatics outside of the candidate’s own organization or company.

“I often tell my students that our electronic medical record is like our stethoscope – it’s that integral to providing patient care,” Banas said. “As the healthcare industry continues the march to becoming entirely digital there is an increasing need for expertise that can bridge the gap between the technical and clinical enterprises. In a nutshell, that’s what informatics does – it bridges the gap.”

Banas is also an internal medicine physician for the hospital and has been at VCU for almost 10 years. He held positions in utilization management and care coordination before finding his “true passion” in informatics. Having worked in the Office of Clinical Transformation (Informatics) since its inception in 2007, Banas has been the CMIO since 2010.

Joseph W. Bendersky, Ph.D., professor, Department of History

Bendersky, professor of modern German history and author of several books and articles on the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, will give the keynote address at “Reason and State,” an international conference at Qinghua University’s School of Law in Beijing, China held Dec. 2-4. Benderskey’s address is titled “Diaries, Letters, Theory: The Significance of Carl Schmitt’s Paper for Political and Legal Thought.”

In addition, he has been invited to give a public talk titled “The U.S. Army and the Holocaust” by the history department at Fudan University in Shanghai on Nov. 28 and the European Studies Center at Beijing Foreign Studies University on Dec. 1.

Bendersky’s visit to China will coincide with the translation and publication of his 1983 book “Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich,” by the Shanghai People’s Publishing House. Bendersky is currently the book review editor for the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, housed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. 

Brian Ohlinger, associate vice president, Facilities Management Division

Ohlinger was made an honorary member of the Virginia Society AIA at this year’s Visions for Architecture gala on Friday, Nov. 4. The Society’s website says the honor is bestowed upon those “who have rendered distinguished and exemplary service, over a sustained period of time, to architecture and the built environment in Virginia.”

Ohlinger has been in charge of VCU’s Facilities Management Department since 1997 and has overseen delivery of nearly $2 billion of capital projects for the University including the Siegel Center, the Trani Center for Life Sciences Building, Massey Cancer Center Goodwin Research Labs, Massey Cancer Center at Stony Point and the Gateway Building and Critical Care Hospital.

Prior to arriving at VCU, Ohlinger served for 28 years in the Army Corps of Engineers, retiring as colonel, earning the Corps of Engineer’s Silver Order of the de Fleury Medal, and later being inducted into the Engineer Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame. He has also served the Commonwealth of Virginia through two gubernatorial appointments to the State Art and Architectural Review Board and was elected board chair in his second term.

Mary Cox, FAIA, Facilities Management Division

Cox, VCU University Architect, was presented with the Virginia Society AIA William C. Noland Medal, the Society’s highest honor bestowed upon an architect, on Friday, Nov. 4. The award, which had never been given to a woman before Cox, recognizes a lifetime of achievement for an individual architect.

Responsible for the Compass, the Shafer Court Dining Facility, the McGlothlin Medical Center and Massey Healing Garden, among others, Cox has spent almost 20 of her 30 years as an architect at VCU and has overseen more than 150 projects valued at more than $1 billion. She said many of her most enjoyable projects have involved “creating cohesive, legible and walkable campuses through the use of streetscapes and campus amenities.” She said, “I have enjoyed highlighting VCU's identity and its cultural heritage through landscape features, sculptures and monuments that tell our story.”

Cox is currently director of the Region of the Virginias on the National AIA Board and serves on the AIA National Advocacy Outreach Committee.  In the past, she has served as the society’s interim development coordinator, vice president for government and industry affairs, vice president for advocacy and president. She also founded and chaired the Professional Practices Task Force for the Association of University Architects, which was later made a standing committee to provide information on best practices.

Lisa Ellis, M.D., FACP, VCU School of Medicine, VCU Medical Center at Stony Point

Ellis was recently named Virginia Governor for the American College of Physicians, an elected position in which she will represent local ACP members in national activities and decisions as well as implement national projects and initiatives at the state level. ACP governors make up the full Board of Governors, an advisory board to the Board of Regents, which is the ACP’s policy-making body.

Ellis is currently executive director at VCU Medical Center at Stony Point, medical director of clinical services at Stony Point Women’s Health Center and associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology and in internal medicine.

“Having someone from VCU in leadership positions that represent the state at national levels is always good for the institution,” said Ellis. “It is a four-year position that places a VCU physician in a position of being acutely privy to the changes occurring in health care reform and can help lead us through these rapidly changing issues and decisions.”

Ellis has been involved in leadership positions with the ACP since 2001, and in 2006 she won the Joseph E. Johnson Leadership Award recognizing her ACP leadership efforts. While at VCU as a resident, she won a leadership award from the Department of Internal Medicine for Housestaff as well as the Arthur Klein Award for Humanism.

Wesley J. Chenault, James Branch Cabell Library

Chenault is the new head of special collections and archives for the James Branch Cabell Library. Chenault is charged with building VCU Libraries collections with pointed interests in under-represented communities.

"Chenault will use both traditional and state-of-the-art practices to develop, preserve and provide access to special collections, and help the VCU Libraries create a compelling vision for growing and celebrating these collections in the future,” said John Ulmschneider, university librarian. “He will bring particular focus to the VCU Libraries' efforts to build world-class collections in fine arts (including comic arts) and community histories (including oral histories) by cultivating appropriate relationships both with the VCU community and with the larger community of donors and committed supporters in Virginia and the Southeast region."

Previously, Chenault served as a research associate for the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History in the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System and collaborated with librarians, archivists, community historians, citizen supporters and others to build and expand access to collections that focus on the history of the African-American community in Georgia. As archivist at the Kenan Research Center in the Atlanta History Center, Chenault's work on collections that document the LGBT community in the Atlanta region was notable. Earlier professional experiences with the National Endowment for the Humanities and Georgia State University focused on collections related to women's studies, oral histories and materials documenting business and civic leaders in Georgia.

Chenault holds a B.A. in psychology from Auburn University, an M.A. in Women's Studies from Georgia State University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico.

Richard A. McPherson, M.D., Department of Pathology, School of Medicine

McPherson, the Harry P. Dalton professor of pathology and chair of the Division of Clinical Pathology, together with Matthew R. Pincus, M.D., Ph.D., professor of clinical pathology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and chair in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System, are co-senior editors for “Henry’s Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods, 22nd Edition.” The publication is considered to be the premier textbook for clinical pathologists and laboratory managers. The comprehensive, multidisciplinary pathology reference provides guidance on lab test selection and interpretation of results.

McPherson previously served as senior editor on the second edition of this same text, and the sixth edition for which he has been a contributor. The text book includes chapters from highly-respected experts from around the world. According to McPherson, the first edition of this textbook appeared in 1908, and it has been known to generations of practicing physicians including James C. Todd, M.D., and Arthur H. Sanford, M.D., who were its earliest editors.

Colleagues from the Department of Pathology who contributed to this new edition include Thomas Dilts, MBPA; Andrea Ferreira-Gonzalez, Ph.D.; Ronald Mageau, M.D.; Davis Massey, M.D., Ph.D.; Greg Miller, Ph.D.; Roger Riley, M.D., Ph.D.; Susan Roseff, M.D.; Kimberly Sanford, M.D.; William Woolf; and David Wilkinson, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of the department also contributed to the textbook.