Monthly | Pulse

MAR '14

An Update from the Perelman School of Medicine

Distinguished Graduate Award Winners Announced

On March 18 recipients of the 2014 Distinguished Graduate Award were selected. This year's winners are William A. Eaton, C'59, M'64, GRM'67 and Alan J. Wein, M'66, INT'70.

Come meet the 2014 winners at the Dean's Dinner Reception this Medical Alumni Weekend at 7:00, Friday, May 16, at the National Constitution Center.

The Distinguished Graduate Award honors highly accomplished alumni for their outstanding service to society and to the profession of medicine, and for their notable accomplishments in biomedical research, clinical practice, or medical education. Previous recipients include Nobel laureates Michael S. Brown, C'62, M'66, HON'86 and Stanley B. Prusiner, C'64, M'68, and former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, GRM'47, HON'90.

Congratulations to Drs. Eaton and Wein! A brief description of their recent accomplishments follows:

William A. Eaton, MD, PhD, is Chief of the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and Chief of Biophysical Chemistry Section at NIH. He serves as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received numerous awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal of the United States Public Health Service.

Alan J. Wein, MD, PhD, is Founders Professor and Chief of the Division of Urology at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Chief of Urology and Director of the Urology Residency Program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor-in-chief of Campbell-Walsh Urology, the textbook considered to be the gold standard in urology.

Watch the Medical Alumni web site for more details of their contributions.

Match Day 2014

See All About It!

Blogger Karthik MuthuswamyMarch 21, 2014, marked a highly emotional day for 161 Perelman School of Medicine students and their families, friends, and professors. Read Karthik Muthuswamy's blog posts about the event and recall your days waiting to find out your residency match, and share this once-in-a-lifetime experience in video and photos!

Perelman Students Have Stylus

The 2014 Edition is Hot Off the Press

Front Row Left to Right: Akosua Nti, Rose Li. Back Row Left to Right: Zachary Meisel, MD, MPH, MS, Peter Guyon, Lauren McCollum, Horace DeLisser, MDPerelman School students have earned their reputation for being driven, talented, and versatile. Since 2012, some students have added a dash of artistry to the medical school experience by creating the literary journal Stylus.

As Yun Rose Li, one of the founding editors and an MD/PhD candidate, explained, "Stylus is a literary and artistic journal that provides a creative outlet for the medical and biomedical community at the University of Pennsylvania." She and co-founders MS4s Peter Guyon and Akosua Nti welcome short stories, essays, opinion pieces, poetry, photography, cartoons, sketches, recipes, and potentially other artistic forms of expression from students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

"This concept is long overdue," said Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion Horace M. DeLisser, M'85, who, along with Zachary F. Meisel, GR'10, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, serves as faculty co-advisor. "The Stylus editors are some of the brightest and most eager students that I've encountered, and their publication provides students, trainees, and physicians with a much-needed opportunity to reflect on and decompress from very stressful work."

The first three editions of Stylus are available online. For next year, the editors are considering the addition of a nonfiction section partly inspired by the British Medical Journal's Medical Humanities.

The literary journal can also count Dean Jameson among its fans: "Stylus is a wonderful publication by students at the Perelman School of Medicine. Through essays, poetry, art and photography, it provides an important forum for expression of ideas, feelings and memories. I commend the contributions for preserving the important linkage between medicine and the humanities."

Stylus is an elegant reminder that every student, every patient, every practitioner, and every person has a story to tell. The journal welcomes your contributions. Please send your submission(s) to pennmedjournal@gmail.com. There is a 2,000-word limit for written submissions, and, while work need not rise to the level of an opus by William Carlos Williams, M'06, HON'52, submissions are not automatically accepted. Student editors carefully review all pieces and also offer a small monetary prize for the best selections.

The editors appreciate the Perelman School's support; the Annual Fund allows such enriching student-run programs to come to fruition.

Speaking of Penn Medicine Literary Aspirations...

Chekov, Doyle, Maugham, CĂ©line, Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and our own William Carlos Williams and Zane Grey. Physicians have made their mark on literature. Kellogg "Kelly" Parsons, M'97, and Eric C. Leuthardt, M'99, also recently joined the ranks of published doctors.

Two debut novels from these two Perelman School alumni are generating more than a fair share of positive reviews, too.

Doing HarmDoing Harm, by Kelly Parsons, tells the story of an apparent botched surgery and the spiraling effects on the career and marriage of an ambitious doctor when the cause of this mysterious death turns out to be far worse than a medical error.

Dr. Parsons is an associate professor of surgery at the University of California, San Diego and the Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is hard at work on his second novel when he isn't practicing medicine and spending time with his wife, Genevieve Noone Parsons, M'98. Doing Harm has been selected for Reader's Digest and several book-of-the-month clubs, and movie rights appear to be in the offing.

Eric Leuthardt's Red Devil 4 is a futuristic thriller that grapples with artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, cloud technology, and the inherent challenges of human interaction, with other humans and machines.

Dr. Leuthardt is a neurosurgeon and an associate professor with the Department of Neurological Surgery and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He also serves as director of the Center for Innovation in Neuroscience and Technology at the Washington University School of Medicine.Red Devil 4

Both these accomplished physicians and new authors drew inspiration from their medical training and careers to provoke thought, and entertain an audience outside the halls of academic medicine. Their novels provide multiple doses of intrigue and manifest the authors' knowledge and passion for the world of medicine.

Perhaps they'll make your reading list.

Have you tried your hand at creative writing? Please feel free to submit your work to Stylus, the literary journal of the Perelman School. Or let us help spread the word of your published, nonacademic work. Contact Sue Peters, Director of Donor Relations at supeters@upenn.edu


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