Thinking Big 2013

About

5 Speakers. 12 minutes. Big Ideas. 

That’s the premise behind UT Southwestern’s inaugural “Thinking Big” event.

Styled after the wildly popular TED Talks, “Thinking Big” will feature some of UT Southwestern’s many interesting professional and personal thinkers.

Attendees

Everyone in the UTSW community is invited 

Can’t make it? No worries, we’ll be posting the videos here after the event.

Time

Saturday, February 16, 2013 
10:30am-12:00pm 

Location

Room D1.700 South Campus

5323 Harry Hines Boulevard

Dallas, TX

Schedule

Dr. Helen Hobbs — Science, Serendipity and the Single Degree

Dr. James Amatruda — Fishing For a Cure:  The Challenge of Childhood Cancer

Dr. Alex Eastman — Best Medicine, Worst Places: The Dallas Experience

Performance by Donald Jones

Dr. Deborah Clegg — From Bedside to Bench: Thinking Outside The Wheaties Box

Dr. Benjamin Levine — Science as Exploration:  Perspectives of a Space Cardiologist

Benjamin Levine, M.D.

BENJAMIN D. LEVINE M.D., is the founder and Director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine (IEEM) at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas where he also holds the S. Finley Ewing Chair for Wellness and the Harry S. Moss Heart Chair for Cardiovascular Research. He is Professor of Internal Medicine/Cardiology and Distinguished Professor of Exercise Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.  Dr. Levine earned his B.A. magna cum laude in human biology from Brown University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.  He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Stanford University Medical Center followed by a cardiology fellowship at UT Southwestern where he trained under the renowned cardiovascular physiologists Gunnar Blomqivst, M.D. and Jere Mitchell, M.D.  Dr. Levine founded the IEEM in 1992 which has become one of the premier laboratories in the world for the study of human clinical and integrative physiology.  His global research interests center on the adaptive capacity of the circulation in response to exercise training, deconditioning, aging, and environmental stimuli such as spaceflight and high altitude.  A Henry Luce Foundation and Fulbright Scholar, he received the Peter van Handel Award from the United States Olympic Committee (for outstanding research), the Research Award from the Wilderness Medical Society, the Honor Award from the Texas Chapter of ACSM, and the Citation Award from the National ACSM for his body of work.  A consummate clinician and teacher as well as a scholar, he was elected to the Association of University Cardiologists, received the Michael J Joyner International Teaching Award from the Danish Cardiovascular Research Academy, and has been selected as one of the “Best Doctors” for cardiovascular medicine in Dallas and America by his peers.  Dr. Levine is widely acknowledged as among the world’s leaders in the field of altitude training, and along with Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen, developed the “living high – training low” model of altitude training.  He also has extensive field experience in high altitude medicine, working as a physician for the Himalayan Rescue Association, as well as the Denali Medical Research Project on Mt. Mckinley.

Dr. Levine also has a unique background in space medicine, serving as a co-investigator on 4 Spacelab missions (SLS-1, SLS-2, D-2 and Neurolab), the MIR space station, and is currently the PI of a large cardiovascular experiment on the ISS, called the “ICV”.  He has a long, sustained track record of funding by the NIH, NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), for which he became Team Leader of the Cardiovascular Section in 2007 and he currently advises NASA’s flight surgeons on cardiovascular medical issues.

Dr Levine has published 243 peer-reviewed journal articles, reviews, book chapters, and technical papers, and is currently serving on the editorial boards of numerous journals, Dr Levine is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the American College of Cardiology, Vice President and a member of the Board of Trustees of ACSM, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Autonomic Society, and an elected member of the Association of University Cardiologists.

Helen Hobbs, M.D.

Helen H. Hobbs, M.D. is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She was born in Boston and obtained her undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University prior to attending Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. After completing an internship in internal medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, she moved to Dallas, Texas where she finished her clinical training and served as chief resident in internal medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein before joining the faculty of UT Southwestern in 1987. She is Director of the McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, which serves as the Center for Human Genetics at UT Southwestern.  She is also Director of the Dallas Heart Study, a longitudinal, multiethnic, population-based study of Dallas County. Her work focuses on defining the genetic determinants of plasma lipoprotein levels and cardiovascular risk. Most recently, she has focused on the genetic susceptibility to fatty liver disease. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She received the the American Heart Association Clinical Research Prize, the Heinrich Wieland Prize and the 2007 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award.

Alex Eastman, M.D.

Dr. Alex Eastman is an Assistant Professor and trauma surgeon in the Division of Burns, Trauma and Critical Care at UT Southwestern Medical Center and the Chief of Trauma Surgery (Interim) at Parkland Memorial Hospital.  A graduate with distinction of the George Washington University School of Medicine, he completed his general surgery and two fellowships at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School/Parkland Memorial Hospital.  He is board-certified in both General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care and has a Master’s Degree in Public Health from The University of Texas Health Science Center—Houston. 

Dr. Eastman works outside the traditional health care setting as well.  He is the Deputy Medical Director of the Dallas Police Department, the Lead Medical Officer for DPD SWAT and a Dallas Police Lieutenant.  Most recently, he has returned to his roots and continues his service with The University of Texas.  In addition to his UT Southwestern Medical Center faculty appointment, Alex was appointed the Medical Director of The University of Texas System Police as well as SRRT Surgeon (rank: Inspector) for the new UT System Police SRRT Team.  This team, charged with responding to critical incidents on all UT System campuses is integral in plans to keep all University of Texas students, faculty and staff safe in these unpredictable times.

 A former firefighter/rescuer in Montgomery County, Maryland, his research/academic  interests include the prehospital care of the injured, novel methods of hemostasis, cost effective wound care and the interface between medicine, law enforcement and public health.  He is the Vice-Chair of the Police Physician’s Section of the International Association of Chief’s of Police and a member of the United States Department of Justice’s Officer Safety and Wellness Working Group.  

Deborah Clegg, Ph.D.

Dr. Deborah Clegg has experienced an ‘other than traditional’ career path in a variety of ways!  She graduated from Oregon State University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Nutrition from the School of Home Economics.  Following graduation, she was selected for the Dietetic Internship Program in the US Army, and completed her training at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio Texas.  She was then selected to educate future Army Dietitians and was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where she trained medical and nutrition students focusing on medical nutrition therapy.  Dr. Clegg also worked with the Army Research and Development Command to devise and formulate MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) – meals provided to deployed soldiers.  Dr. Clegg completed her tour of duty at Ft. Lee in Petersburg Virginia where she supervised the Dining facilities for the installation as well as counseled soldiers who were deemed ‘medically unfit’ for service (ie, they didn’t meet the weight standards of the Army).  Following release from active duty, she decided to focus her career on Clinical Dietetics and worked as a Nutrition Support Dietitian at Falls Church Medical Center in Northern Virginia.  Dr. Clegg continued to serve in the reserves and was deployed to Germany during the first Gulf War to back fill Dietitians who were assigned to the middle east.  She subsequently obtained her MBA from Boston University using the GI bill, and was then afforded the opportunity to oversee the Dietetic Internship Program at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia.  While training Dietitians, Dr. Clegg elected to continue her medical education, and was selected for the PhD program in Nutrition at the University of Georgia.  Her experience at that institution began when she was handed a rat on the first day of her doctoral program, and was asked to perform brain surgery on the rodent.  Dr. Clegg finished her PhD in behavioral and nutritional neuroscience in 3 years, and upon completion of her degree, was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cincinnati in the Department of Psychiatry.  Subsequently, she was appointed to a faculty position at the University of Cincinnati after successful funding of her first RO1 grant focusing on the role of sex hormones in modulating metabolism.  Dr. Clegg was recruited to UTSW in 2008, where she has risen to the rank of Associate Professor and maintains a laboratory funded from NIH.  Dr. Clegg is known as a leader in nutritional and metabolic research where she focuses on the role of sex hormones and nutrients and their regulation of energy homeostasis.

James Amatruda, M.D., Ph.D.

James Amatruda, MD, PhD, a native of New Haven, CT, was inspired by his 7th-grade teacher to become a scientist.  He studied biochemistry at Harvard University and went to Washington University in St. Louis for his MD/PhD degree, where he worked with John Cooper on the genetics of the yeast actin cytoskeleton.  He did a residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, after which he and his wife spent nearly two years in Rome, where he worked on mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance and appeared on Italian TV, among other adventures.  Returning to Boston, he completed a fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, before joining Len Zon’s lab at Boston Children’s Hospital where he began his work using zebrafish as a model of human cancer.

In 2005 Amatruda joined the faculty at UTSW.  He is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Molecular Biology and Internal Medicine, and an Attending Physician at Children’s Medical Center.  His laboratory focuses on understanding the genetic causes of childhood cancers including germ cell tumor, Wilms tumor and Ewing’s Sarcoma, using zebrafish models and human genomic approaches.  He is Chair of the Rare Tumors Biology Committee of the Children’s Oncology Group, the national organization that oversees clinical and biological studies of pediatric cancers.  In 2009 he received a Health Care Heroes award from the Dallas Business Journal, and he has been selected as an outstanding lecturer by the MS1 class 5 times.  In his spare time he enjoys reading, cycling and exploring Texas on hiking and camping trips with his son.

The Thinking Big Team

Thinking Big 2013 was founded and organized by:

Gaurab Chakrabarti, 3rd year MSTP 

Rima Shah, MS2

Shyam Sivasankar, MS3