Last week the Executive Committee on Research (ECOR) of the Mass General Research Institute hosted the 2020 Celebration of Science. Many members of the department were honored as part of this virtual celebration, including four members of our department who won the Anne Klibanski Visiting Scholars Award.
Despite extensive work to improve gender equity in academic medicine, women continue to lag behind men in promotions and leadership positions. This inequity has intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic which disproportionately is affecting women who are tasked with taking on increased childcare and household responsibilities and/or the care of ailing relatives.
With the COVID-19-related travel bans most Grand Rounds and Visiting Professorships around the country are being conducted virtually. This provides an opportunity to promote the participation of more women in Visiting Professorships by removing the barriers that often prevent women to travel.
The Center for Faculty Development’s Anne Klibanski Visiting Scholars Award was presented to 36 women faculty clinicians, educators, researchers and women postdocs at MGH, who have shown exceptional promise as leaders in their field and whose careers would specifically benefit from speaking, mentoring and networking opportunities at the national or international level. This award will provide an opportunity to serve as “virtual” Visiting Professor to give Grand Rounds at a national or international institution, organized by the Center for Faculty Development. Moreover, a mentor at the host institution will be identified for the Scholar. The Scholar will also receive professional coaching on presentation and interview skills, as well as a virtual career development seminar series.
Of the 36 recipients of the award, the following are members of the MGH Department of Psychiatry:
Zeina El-Chemali, MD, MPH: Dr. Zeina Chemali is the Director of the Neuropsychiatry Clinics and Training in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Chemali is one of the few physicians in the country who is dually boarded in psychiatry and neurology and has additional expertise on developmental disorders. At the Division of Global Psychiatry, Dr. Chemali directs the Global Neuropsychiatry Outreach program. Dr. Chemali’s research interests include the social determinants of health in developing countries, the impact of structural violence on vulnerable groups, especially the elderly and the refugees.
Annie Kathuria, PhD: Dr. Annie Kathuria is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Center for Human Genomic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research focuses on engineering novel stem cell techniques and studying the basic mechanistic causes of neurological disorders. She is working to develop a research model that uses human induced pluripotent stem cells to engineer brain organoids (mini brains) with the goal of finding new therapeutics for mental health disorders.
Nhi-Ha Trinh, MD, MPH: Dr. Nhi-Ha Trinh serves as the Director, MGH Psychiatry Center for Diversity and as an Associate Director, HMS Holmes Society. Her work focuses on optimizing cultural sensitivity and humility in mental health care. She is a residency training mentor for the Mass General/McLean Adult Psychiatry Training Program and co-directs the residency’s longitudinal Sociocultural Psychiatry didactics series. Dr. Trinh earned her MD at the University of California, San Francisco, and her MPH at the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in Epidemiology.
Eve Valera, PhD: Dr Eve Valera is a researcher with the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. Her lab uses a range of neuroimaging and neuropsychological methodologies to investigate two understudied areas of interest: the role of the cerebellum in psychiatric illness and the sequelae of traumatic brain injuries in women experiencing intimate-partner violence. She currently is using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and other advanced imaging scans to test for the presence of abuse-related brain injuries in women who have been in a physically abusive relationship.
