April 2026
Honors & Awards
Daniela Franco, Carlos Medina Saldivar, and Amanda Pacheco-Spiewak, Graduate Students, Department of Neurobiology, have been honored with an award from the MPower Early Scholars Investment Fund. This prestigious recognition acknowledges their exceptional potential and significant contributions as emerging scholars and researchers.
Adam Puche, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Neurobiology, was selected as the commencement speaker for the Physician Assistant Class of 2026 during their Long White Coat Ceremony to be held in May 2026. This special occasion marks the 30th graduating class of this program. Adam was selected by the graduating students to deliver the commencement address. They noted: "Students consistently describe your passion for anatomy and authentic love of teaching as energizing and motivating during an especially overwhelming time in the program. Your enthusiasm in the lab made a challenging course both engaging and meaningful, and your dedication to students left a lasting impression on the cohort. They recall entering your lab at the start of their training feeling both excited and uncertain, and they appreciate the significant role you played in shaping the foundation of their professional journey."
Grants & Contracts
Nigus Ambaye, PhD, Research Associate, Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, received a one-year, $75,000 EDS Accelerator Award from the American Cancer Society to study “Perforalytics: A First-in-Class Therapeutic Modality for Eliminating Refractory Tumors.”
Joseph Cheer, PhD, and Mary Kay Lobo, PhD, Professors, Department of Neurobiology, were awarded a grant by the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) and Maryland Genomics IGS Pilot Grant under the Spatial Atlas award, for their project “Generation of a Spatial Transcriptomics Atlas for Profiling Developmental Processes of Mesolimbic Neurons and their Changes in Complex Response Properties Elicited by Prenatal THC Exposure.”
Sarah Kattakuzhy, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, and Donna Calu, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Neurobiology, were awarded a grant from the Center for Addiction Research, Education, and Service (CARES) for “Forward and Back-translational Pipelines for Polysubstance Use Disorder.”
Bruce Wasserman, MD, Professor, Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the AD Strategic Fund and the Alzheimer's Association to study “Intracranial Atherosclerosis, Blood Brain Barrier Status, and Dementia Risk.” This will support an ancillary study to the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).
Fuwen Zhou, BM, MM, Dr.rer.nat., Assistant Professor, and Adam Puche, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Neurobiology, were awarded a five-year, mPI R01 grant from NIA for "HCN Channels Mediate Olfactory Dysfunction in Aging and Neurological Disease."
Publications
Alexander Allen, MD, Resident; Bansi Savla, MD, Resident; Zackery Keepers, Medical Student; Caitlin Eggleston, Director of Clinical Research Operations; Jason Molitoris, MD, PhD, Associate Professor; Matthew Ferris, MD, Associate Professor; Akshar Patel, MD, Assistant Professor; Zaker Rana, MD, Assistant Professor; Dan Kunaprayoon, MD, Assistant Professor; Jack Hong, MD, Assistant Professor; Wendla Citron, MD, Assistant Professor; Mark Mishra, MD, Professor; William F. Regine, MD, Professor; Young Kwok, MD, Professor; and Melissa Vyfhuis, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, all with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were among the authors of “Impact of a Precision Medicine Navigator on Genomic Test Utilization in Black Patients with Prostate Cancer,” which was published on March 3 ahead of print in JCO Oncology Practice.
Elvis Amurrio, Marie Danaher, and Michy Kelly, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Neurobiology, are among the authors of a new publication entitled “Potent, Selective Pyrrolopyrimidine PDE11A4 Inhibitors with Improved Pharmaceutical Properties,” which was published in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters on January 30, 2026.
Bonghwan Chon, PhD, Research Scientist; Mukesh Pratap Yadav, PhD, Research Specialist; and Vikas Kundra, MD, PhD, Professor, all with the Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, were among the co-authors of “Fluorescence Imaging of DMDG-ICG Across NIR-I and NIR-II Windows Using a Single-Camera System,” which was published in February 2026 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. Dr. Chon was the first author and Dr. Kundra was the last author.
Erika Davies, PhD, Assistant Professor, and Mark Mishra, MD, Professor, both with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were among the authors of “Platinum-Based Therapeutics as Emerging Multi-Modal Radiosensitizers in Glioblastoma Treatment,” which was published on February 13 ahead of print in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews.
Gulakhshan Hamad, PhD, Postdoctoral Student; Yannick Poirier, PhD, Associate Professor; Sina Mossahebi, PhD, Associate Professor; and Amit Sawant, PhD, Professor, all with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were the authors of “Combining Proton FLASH and Spatially Fractionated Radiotherapy: Experimental and Simulation-Based Dosimetric Characterization,” which was published on February 19 ahead of print in Physics in Medicine and Biology.
Stephanie Jo, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, was the first author of “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Assessment,” which was published in March 2026 in Radiologic Clinics of North America.
Hadiseh Kavandi, MD, Resident; Kyle Costenbader, Resident; Sandrine Yazbek, MD, Assistant Professor; Peter Kamel, MD, Assistant Professor; Noushin Yahyavi-Firouz-Abadi, MD, MBA, Associate Professor; and Jean Jeudy, MD, Professor, all with the Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, were the co-authors of “Performance Evaluation of a Commercial Deep Learning Software for Detecting Intracranial Hemorrhage in a Pediatric Population,” which was published in the Journal of Imaging Informatics in Medicine on February 2, 2026. Epub ahead of print. Dr. Kavandi was the first author and Dr. Jeudy was the last author.
Yankun Lang, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Lei Ren, PhD, Professor, both with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were among the authors of “A Physics-Informed Neural Network for In Vivo Dosimetry Using Quantitative Radiacoustic Imaging,” which was prepublished on January 20 in Res Square.
Wei Li, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology & Physiology and Institute for Health Computing, was the last author of “An Integrated Multi-omics and Network Analysis of Neutrophil Differentiation from Initial- to Late-stage,” which was published in Genome Biology on January 30, 2026.
Yiran Li, PhD, Assistant Professor, and Ze Wang, PhD, Professor, both with the Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, were among the co-authors of “Transformer Enabled Half Z-Spectrum Sampling B0 Inhomogeneity Correction for GluCEST and NOE MRI,” which was published in Chemical and Biomedical Imaging in September 2025. Dr. Li was the first author and Dr. Wang was the last author.
Brian Mathur, PhD, Professor, Departments of Pharmacology & Physiology and Psychiatry, was the senior author of “Perineuronal Net and Inhibitory Synapse Remodeling on Striatal Fast-spiking Interneurons by Chronic Alcohol Exposure,” which was published in Biological Psychiatry on February 17, 2026.
Robabeh Rahimi, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology, was among the authors of “Enhancing Proton Therapy for Superficial Lesions Using Patient-Specific Bolus and Multi-Leaf Collimator,” which was published on February 18 ahead of print in Radiological Physics and Technology. Dr. Rahimi was also among the authors of “Enhancing Dose Conformity in Head and Neck Intensity-Modulated Proton Therapy Using a Novel Dynamic Multi-Leaf Collimator Strategy,” which was published in the February issue of Medical Physics.
Apurva Singh, PhD, Postdoctoral Student; Amit Sawant, PhD, Professor; and Lei Ren, PhD, Professor, all with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were among the authors of “Prediction of Metastasis-Free Survival in Patients with Localized Prostate Adenocarcinoma Using Delta Radiomics from Pre-Treatment PSMA-PET/CT Scans and Dosiomics,” which appeared in the February 19 issue of Cancers.
Elana Smith, MD, Associate Professor; Rydhwana Hossain, MD, Associate Professor, and Charles Resnik, MD, Professor, all with the Department of Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, were among the co-authors of “Program Directors' Perspectives on the Transition to the Oral Boards: Results From a National Survey,” which was published in February 2026 in Academic Radiology. Epub ahead of print. Dr. Smith was the first author.
Mumtaz Hussain Soomro, PhD, Postdoctoral Student; Junliang Xu, PhD, Assistant Professor; Narottam Lamichhane, PhD, Associate Professor; and Amit Sawant, PhD, Professor, all with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were among the authors of “Surface Tracking-Assisted Multi-Cycle 4D MRI Motion Modeling for Lung Radiotherapy: A Preliminary Validation Study,” which appeared in the February 25 issue of Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express.
Sunitha Subhramania, PhD; Olga Bocharova, MD, PhD; Natallia Makarava, BS, Research Associate; Tarek Safadi; and Ilia Baskakov, PhD, Professor, all with the Department of Neurobiology, are authors of a new publication, "Dissecting Surveying Behavior of Reactive Microglia under Chronic Neurodegeneration," which was published in eLife on January 8, 2026.
Chayu Yang, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow; Zachery Keepers, Medical Student; Hem Shukla, PhD, Assistant Professor; and Lei Ren, PhD, Professor, all with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were the authors of “Tumor Organoids Modeling Reveals Timed Responses and Interplay of Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy in Pancreatic Cancer,” which was published on March 3 ahead of print in Radiotherapy and Oncology.
Byong-Yong Yi, PhD, Professor; Shifeng Chen, PhD, Professor; and Baoshe Zhang, PhD, Associate Professor, all with the Department of Radiation Oncology, were the authors of “Checklist and Quality Assurance Tools for Integration of Two Radiation Oncology Information Systems (ROISs),” which appeared in the February issue of the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics.
Publication Awards
Mordecai Blaustein, MD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Pharmacology & Physiology, has published 315 articles, which have been cited more than 34,000 times with an h-index of 102, reflecting his major and sustained influence in the field of Physiology.
In 2024, Dr. Blaustein and John Hamlyn, PhD, Professor, also with the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology, published “Sensational Site: The Sodium Pump Ouabain Binding Site and its Ligands” in the American Journal of Physiology Cell Physiology. The article was designated a Landmark Review, a rare distinction awarded by the journal, and is already among its top-cited recent articles.
The review synthesizes decades of work on endogenous ligands of the Na⁺/K⁺ ATPase. It builds on Blaustein’s 1977 review in the American Journal of Physiology: Cell Physiology, in which he first postulated the existence of a previously unrecognized endogenous hormone that regulates the sodium pump. That 1977 article has since been cited nearly 2,000 times.
In 1999, Dr. Blaustein and W. Jonathan Lederer, MD, PhD, Professor, Pharmacology & Physiology, published “Sodium Calcium Exchange: Its Physiological Implications” in Physiological Reviews. The article has since been cited more than 2,000 times, underscoring its lasting impact on research into the Na⁺/Ca²⁺ exchanger and its role in cellular calcium regulation and cardiovascular physiology.
In 1991, Dr. Blaustein and Dr. Hamlyn were among the authors of “Identification and Characterization of a Ouabain-like Compound from Human Plasma” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The article has since been cited more than 1,000 times.