University of Vermont researchers Sean Diehl, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and a Vaccine Testing Center immunologist, Sam Scarpino, Ph.D., former assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, Donna Rizzo, Ph.D., professor of engineering, and John Hanley, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in engineering, have been awarded the inaugural UVM Biomedical Engineering Program Pilot Research Program grant for their project, titled “Integrating omics and clinical data to study dengue infection.”

The McGraw family, founders of global multimedia publishing company McGraw-Hill, is continuing its legacy of investing in community health by pledging up to $3 million in a challenge gift to establish the new McGraw Family Center for Advanced Learning at Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut.

Donald Mathews, M.D., professor of anesthesiology, has been named chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and health care service chief of anesthesiology, effective July 15. Mathews succeeds Mazen Maktabi, M.D., who served in this role since August 2016.

A five-year, $20 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) Network grant will fund a joint program between the University of Vermont (UVM) and Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine to develop and sustain a clinical and translational research infrastructure improving rural and community health for residents of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has awarded a three-year, $1.8 million grant to James J. Hudziak, a professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, to determine if the UVM Wellness Environment, or WE, in concert with a health promotion and disease prevention app he developed will promote wellness among college students, in the process reducing their use of alcohol and other drugs.

Two University of Vermont research teams have been awarded SPARK-VT grants by the university to help commercialize their work and move it a step closer to the marketplace, following a faculty pitch competition held June 16, 2017.

Patients whose hearts have a faulty mitral valve and are considered high risk for open-heart surgery now have a treatment option offered by cardiologists at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Called Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair (TMVR), the procedure uses a catheter inserted through a vein in the leg to reach the heart and make the repair. The mitral valve performs a check-valve function and is located between the left atrium, where blood enters the heart from the lungs, and the left ventricle, which pumps the blood to your entire body.

In cells, cargo that contains tiny packages of critical biological material, such as insulin, are transported by teams of minuscule myosin molecular “motors” along complex actin filament “highways.” How these motors reach their destination when confronted with numerous intersections without GPS is a mystery. In a new study published in Nature Communications, University of Vermont researchers built three-dimensional (3D) actin highways with intersections as well as under- and over-passes within microfluidic chambers to emulate the complicated highways that myosin motors see in cells.