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Faculty Staff Trainees
As the first graduate of the Harvard Medical Scientist Training Program, Reed Pyeritz earned a Ph.D. in biological chemistry in addition to his M.D in 1975. His internship and assistant residency in medicine were at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and his senior residency was at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He joined the faculty at Hopkins and rose to Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Clinical Director of the Center for Medical Genetics. In 2001, he became chief of the Division of Medical Genetics at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is board-certified in internal medicine and clinical genetics, and is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He founded the National Marfan Foundation and continues to serve on its Professional Advisory Board. He has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Medical Genetics, the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Society and Circulation. Pyeritz is the co-editor of the standard textbook in the field, Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics, the 5th edition of which was published in 2007. In 1991, he was one of the founders of the American College of Medical Genetics and became its 2nd president. He also served as the president of the Association of Professors of Human or Medical Genetics.
Dr. Pyeritz has long been recognized as an international authority on the genetics of cardiovascular disorders, especially the Marfan syndrome and hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. He has published over 400 scientific articles, reviews and chapters in textbooks.
Barbara Bernhardt received a B.S. in Biology from Cornell University and an M.S. in Epidemiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Ms Bernhardt is a board-certified genetic counselor who has practiced for over 30 years in a variety of settings, including pediatrics, prenatal, adult medicine and oncology.
In 1991, she joined the Genetics and Public Policy Studies Unit at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where she was an investigator on a number of NIH-funded projects that explored both qualitatively and quantitatively: the diffusion of new genetic technologies; consumer and provider knowledge of and attitudes towards genetics and genetic testing; methods of delivering and evaluating genetic services; patient-provider communication; and reimbursement for genetic services. She was previously the Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins University/National Institutes of Health Genetic Counseling Graduate Program and taught the thesis proposal development course as a part of that program. She joined the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.
Ms. Bernhardt has served on numerous local and national committees and advisory boards as a genetic counselor and as an expert in ethical, legal and social implications of the Human Genome Project. She currently provides genetic counseling to adults with or at risk for genetic disorders, and is interested in decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and the psychosocial impact of genetic risk.
Vincent Price is Associate Provost and Steven H. Chaffee Professor of Communication and Political Science. He was formerly chair of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan, where he also served as a Faculty Associate with the Center for Political Studies in the Institute for Social Research. He received his PhD in 1987 from Stanford University.
Price has published extensively on mass communication and public opinion, social influence processes, and political communication. His research on media framing of issues, the measurement of media exposure and political information, social identification processes, and third-person effects of mass communication is widely cited; and his book Public Opinion (Sage, 1992) has been translated and published in five languages. His recent research focuses on the role of online political conversation and deliberation in shaping public opinion.
Price has received a number of awards for his teaching and research, including the:
- K. Kyoon Hur Dissertation Award from the International Communication Association
- Nafziger-White Dissertation Award from the American Association in Journalism and Mass Communication
- Excellence in Education Awards from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan
- Robert M. Worcester Award from the World Association for Public Opinion Research
- Award of Appreciation from the American Association for Public Opinion Research
He has served actively in several professional associations and has been Editor of Public Opinion Quarterly.
Joseph N. Cappella, Ph.D., is Professor of Communication and holds the Gerald R. Miller Chair at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Cappella's research has resulted in more than 100 articles and book chapters and three co-authored books in areas of health and political communication, social interaction, nonverbal behavior, media effects, and statistical methods. The articles have appeared in journals in psychology, communication, health, and politics. His research has been supported by grants from NIMH, NIDA, NSF, NCI, NHGRI, The Twentieth Century Fund, and from the Markle, Ford, Carnegie, Pew, and Robert Wood Johnson foundations. He has served on the editorial boards of 15 different journals. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and its past president, a distinguished scholar of the National Communication Association, and recipient of the B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award.
Dr. Ruth Schwartz Cowan
is Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Cowan received her A.B. in zoology from Barnard College in 1961, her masters in history from UC Berkeley in 1964, and her Ph.D. in the history of science from Johns Hopkins University in 1969.
Her current research investigates the intersection between gender studies and the histories of modern science, technology, and medicine. Her most recent book is Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening (Harvard University Press, 2008). She has been the President of the Society for the History of Technology, the Chair of the National Academy of Science's U.S. National Committee for the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science, a member of the Smithsonian Council and of the Humanities Visiting Committee of MIT.
Dr. Cowan has received a number of prizes and grants, including the Leonardo da Vinci Prize, the Dexter Prize, the J.D. Bernal Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as recent grants from the Sloan Foundation, the NSF, and the NIH. In 1999, she traveled to Cyprus as a senior Fulbright scholar to research the prevention and treatment of thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder.
Susan Lindee, PhD
Dr. Susan Lindee is Professor of the History and Sociology of Science. She had an earlier career as a journalist, and then earned a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cornell University, in 1990. Her current research focuses on twentieth century science in the United States. She is working on a social history of the militarization of technical knowledge in mid-century America, a study of Cystic Fibrosis, and a project on the comparative history of field practice in physical anthropology.
A leading figure in her field, she has played an important role in the governance of the History of Science Society, as a member of council, chair of several committees, and editorial board member for both Isis and Osiris. Her books include Moments of Truth in Genetic Medicine, (2005); Genetic Nature-Culture (2003); The DNA Mystique (with Dorothy Nelkin, 1995) and Suffering Made Real (1994). She has been a Brown Center Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Weiler Fellow, and has received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund 40th Anniversary Award, the Schuman Prize of the History of Science Society, and research support from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She participated in the Panel for the Constitution Project on the Dover creation science trial, and is a member of the Advisory Board, National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics (NIREHG), Georgetown University. She has also worked with Peter Harper and the European Molecular Biology Organization on planning for the documentation of twentieth-century genetics and genomics.
Katrina Armstrong, MD, MS
Dr. Katrina Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Co-Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr. Armstrong is also Associate Director of the Abramson Cancer Center and co-Leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program. Dr. Armstrong is the past recipient of a Preventive Oncology Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute, a Clinical Research Training Grant from the American Cancer Society, a Young Investigator Award from the Department of Defense and a Generalist Faculty Scholar Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Dr. Armstrong's research seeks to elucidate the complex relationship among the social environment, health care, and cancer outcomes. Her research has concentrated on several areas of critical policy importance including genetic testing for cancer susceptibility, racial disparities in cancer outcomes, and the impact of distrust of the health care system on cancer screening and prevention behaviors among minority groups.
Chanita Hughes-Halbert, PhD
Dr. Chanita Hughes-Halbert is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Community and Minority Cancer Control Initiative at the Abramson Cancer Center. Dr. Hughes-Halbert is also Co-PI for the Penn Center for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD) and is PI of the Community Outreach and Dissemination Core in the Center. Dr. Hughes-Halbert has conducted a significant amount of research on the contribution of sociocultural and psychological factors related to cancer prevention and control behaviors in African Americans and developing interventions to address these factors. Her work has focused on decision-making about genetic testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) mutations and the psychological and behavioral outcomes of receiving genetic risk information. She is PI of a randomized trial funded by the Department of Defense to develop and evaluate a culturally tailored genetic counseling protocol for African American women. She is also currently conducting research that is designed to understand ethnic differences in psychological functioning among long-term prostate cancer survivors.
David Asch is Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the Robert D. Eilers Professor of Medicine and Health Care Management and Economics at the School of Medicine and the Wharton School. He is also Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center.
Dr. Asch's research aims to understand how physicians and patients behave and make medical choices in clinical, financial, and ethically charged settings. He has special expertise in understanding how physicians and patients incorporate perceptions of financial cost and health risk into their decisions, including the adoption of new pharmaceuticals or medical technologies or the purchase of health or life insurance. His research combines elements of economic analysis with moral and psychological theory and marketing.
Shimrit Keddem, manager of the Penn CIGHT, has been managing and implementing healthcare and social science research in several academic settings and large hospitals for the past seven years. She has participated in research on various health and social issues including access to prenatal care, cancer services, Alzheimer's disease, and injury prevention. She comes from an interdisciplinary background and has expertise in qualitative data analysis and spatial data analysis. Ms. Keddem received a B.A. in Psychology from McGill University and a Masters in Urban Spatial Analysis from the University of Pennsylvania.
Cara Zayac
Cara Zayac is the Research Coordinator for CIGHT. She received her undergraduate degree in Life Science with a minor in Psychology from Penn State University. Cara has a background in health care and research and is hoping to expand her experience with social issues of health care. She is looking forward to collaborating with the many investigators funded by CIGHT. Cara is also a graduate student in the Public Health Program at Penn and is interested in social epidemiology, specifically in wellness, prevention and translating research into policy.
Donna Messner began her postdoctoral traineeship at the Penn CIGHT in July 2008. She received an MSc by Research (2004) and a PhD (2008) in science and technology studies from the University of Edinburgh (UK). Her doctoral research was focused on processes of legal and regulatory oversight and innovation in the development of new therapies for serious and life-threatening conditions. In 2006, she was also a visiting student at the School of Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology with sponsorship from Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area (PRIME). Prior to pursuing the MSc/PhD, she received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Virginia Tech (1984) and had an 18-year career as an analytical chemist, laboratory manager and senior project scientist. Dr. Messner also holds an MA in literature (cultural studies) from George Mason University (2000).
Elly Teman, PhD
Elly Teman will begin a postdoctoral traineeship at the Penn CIGHT in October 2008. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology (2006) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her doctoral research was an ethnographic study of surrogate motherhood arrangements in Israel from the perspectives of the anthropology of reproduction and medical anthropology. In 2007-2008 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Science, Technology and Society Center and at the Beatrice M. Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, with sponsorship from the Rothschild Foundation (Yad Hanadiv) and the Ginsberg Foundation. Dr. Teman is the past recipient of the Herbert Blumer award from the American Sociological Association, the CAR graduate paper award from the American Anthropological Association, the Raphael Patai Prize from the American Folklore Society, and the Elli Kongas-Maranda Prize from the American Folklore Society.