Professional Notes: Summer 2026
Professional Notes is a round-up of awards, presentations, papers, and other professional achievements of SLU faculty, staff members, and students.
Faculty and Staff
Kristina Dzara, Ph.D. (Family and Community Medicine) served as faculty at the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators in Health Professions Course in Boston from May 4-8. She facilitated micro-teaching, speed mentoring, poster presentations, and spoke about blogging in medical education.
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Benjamin Looker, Ph.D. (American Studies) gave a paper titled "The People in Your Neighborhood: Children’s Texts and the Great Society Urban Aesthetic” at a Washington University in St. Louis symposium, on April 24, 2026, in honor of the career achievements of the renowned art historian Professor Angela L. Miller.
Looker was also the featured lecturer for the Missouri Historical Society's semi-annual Thomas Jefferson Society Lecture, held on April 21, 2026, at the Missouri History Museum. His presentation was titled "After Mill Creek: Uses and Fate of LaClede Town's Iconic 'Experiment in Integration."
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Julie Birkenmaier, Ph.D. (Social Work) recently presented her research at the 2026 Joint World Conference for Social Work, Education, and Social Development in Nairobi, Kenya. Birkenmaier presented Financial Stress and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Developing the Individual Financial Access Scale for Clinical Practice and also co-presented Financial Social Work as a Global Practice: Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals Through Financial Capability and Asset Building. Her presentations contributed to international conversations on financial well-being, clinical practice, and the role of financial social work in advancing sustainable development around the world."
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Karen Platt (Clinical Health Sciences) recently presented "Metabolic Dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease: An Evidence-Based Guide for Primary Care Management."
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Fred Pestello, Ph.D. (President Emeritus) and Frances Pestello, Ph.D., (Sociology and Anthropology) presented at a thematic panel at the Annual Meetings of the Midwest Sociological Society held in St. Louis in March.
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Jason T. Eberl, Ph.D. (Bioethics) delivered the annual Plunkett Lecture in Ethics at Australian Catholic University: “Enhancing Human Beings: Possible? Desirable? Ethical?” Attendees included the Archbishop of Sydney, Most Rev. Anthony Fisher, and Auxiliary Bishop Richard Umbers. An accompanying essay was published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion & Ethics section [
Eberl also presented two papers at the 5th International Conference on End of Life held in Brisbane, Australia: “What Is the True Death of a Human Being?” and “Unilateral Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Treatment within Crisis Standards of Care.” In addition, Eberl was invited to deliver the John Grant Lecture in Health Care Ethics at Loyola University Chicago, focusing on bioethics in popular culture: “Genetics, Ethics, and Khaaaaaan! Transhumanist Themes in Star Trek and Other Sci-Fi.”
Eberl also participated in a panel, “Prophecy Amidst Polarization: Evaluating the Role of Religious Language in Bioethics,” at the 14th Annual Conference on Medicine and Religion.
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Lisa Fischer, Ph.D. (INTO SLU) presented "Navigating Complexity with Mission-Focused Leadership in ESL Program Administration" at the TESOL 2026 International Convention & Expo held in Salt Lake City in March.
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Karen Platt (Clinical Health Sciences) and Genevieve DelRosario, DMSc, (Medical Science Program) shared their expertise by presenting at the recent Missouri State Academy of PAs conference, representing SLU and contributing to the continued education and professional development of PAs across Missouri.
Joanne C Langan, Ph.D. (Nursing) had the article "Preparing for and responding to the grief of disasters" published in Health Emergency and Disaster Nursing.
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Nancy L. Weaver, Ph.D. (Behavioral Science and Health Equity) published the research article "Beyond Wound Care: Implementing a Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program to Meet the Complex Needs of Youth Experiencing Community Violence" in the Journal of Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance.
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Keon L. Gilbert, DrPH (Behavioral Science and Health Equity) published the research article "Fathering in a Pandemic: Low-Income Black Fathers’ Experiences and Mental Health Stressors" in the American Journal of Men’s Health with faculty and researchers from other universities.
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Ricardo J. Wray, Ph.D. (Behavioral Science and Health Equity) contributed to the research article "Psychometric Testing of the Hospice Perceptions Instrument (HPI) for Patients and Families in the United States" with researchers from several departments at Saint Louis University and other universities in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
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Kenan Li, Ph.D. (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) led the publishing of the research article "Driving the neural exposome: Latent mobility states from naturalistic GPS data in older adults" with Enbal Shacham, Ph.D.(Behavioral Science and Health Equity) in the Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.
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SangNam Ahn, Ph.D. (Health Management and Policy) led the publishing of the research article "Navigating Duty and Desire: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Motivations and Their Impact on End-of-Life Care Among Asian Family Caregivers" in the Journal of Integrative Nursing and Palliative Care (JINPC).
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Hossein Rafiei, Ph.D. (Nutrition and Dietetics) recently published a new systematic review and network meta-analysis in Nutrition Reviews examining the effects of different intermittent fasting strategies on visceral and subcutaneous fat in adults with overweight and obesity. The study analyzed 24 randomized controlled trials involving 1,930 participants and compared several intermittent fasting approaches, including time-restricted eating (TRE), alternate-day fasting (ADF), and the 5:2 diet. The findings suggested that the 5:2 diet and TRE were associated with greater reductions in visceral and subcutaneous fat compared with control conditions. However, the advantages over traditional continuous calorie restriction were generally limited. The authors concluded that intermittent fasting may serve as an effective alternative to continuous calorie restriction as part of a broader lifestyle approach for improving metabolic health and obesity-related outcomes, with long-term adherence likely playing an important role in effectiveness.
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Erick Messias, M.D., Ph.D. (Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience) and two students, Julia Palacios and Lauren Gordon published "The Virtue of Temperance: a neurobiological perspective.
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Nori Katagiri, Ph.D.(Political Science) published a commentary on AI and cybersecurity at the Institute for International Political Studies, the oldest think tank in Italy. In the piece titled "State Hacking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," he uses Anthropic’s Claude Code case to show how difficult it is becoming to keep countries with malicious intent from using AI to conduct cyber operations against rivals.
Juliana Navia Pelaez, Ph.D. (Pharmacology and Physiology) received a $200,000 American Heart Association (AHA) Innovative Project Award, co-funded by the American Headache Society (AHS), for the project “Neurogenic Priming of Perivascular Macrophages by Migraine-Associated Peptides Increases Stroke Risk.” Vincenza Cifarelli, Ph.D. (Pharmacology and Physiology), serves as collaborating investigator. The project will investigate how migraine-associated neuropeptides drive chronic immune activation in the brain and may increase stroke risk, helping to uncover mechanisms linking migraine to cerebrovascular vulnerability.
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Bassem Mohammed, Ph.D. (Biochemistry) was named the winner of the 2026 Loeb Prize for his paper entitled "Cryo-EM structure of coagulation factor Va bound to activated protein C" published in Blood (2025). Mohammed received seven of the total 16 votes cast by 13 primary and three secondary BMB faculty.
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Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, Ph.D. (Theological Studies) has been awarded a Residential Fellowship at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton. As part of an initiative funded by the Templeton Foundation, From Despair to Hope: Interdisciplinary Theology in the Service of Building Spiritual Capital, Rosario joins a cohort of scholars exploring the topic of hope in "Civics and Politics." The residential fellowship at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton will allow Rosario to complete his research and writing on his monograph titled, "Between Despair and Complacency: Reclaiming the Theology of Hope" for Cambridge University Press.
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Ander Beristain, Ph.D.(Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures) has been selected as the 2026 Jon Bilbao Chair, an initiative supported by the Etxepare Basque Institute at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. As part of his research stay, Beristain will explore language development and acquisition, as well as the transmission of language between generations, focusing on both children and adults within the Basque diaspora in North America.
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Anne Garanzini (Clinical Health Sciences) was honored as PA Faculty of the Year at the recent Missouri State Academy of PAs conference. The event honored faculty, students, and preceptors for their outstanding contributions to the PA profession and PA education.
Joy Stark (Nursing) appeared on Mentorship Matters to share how her mentor helped shape her path and supported Joy in in her nursing scholarship.
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Research from Stephen Blake, Ph.D. (Biology) was highlighted by National Geographic.
Students
Ashutosh Pawar (School of Science and Engineering) has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) Globe Building St. Louis Scholarship.
The Globe Building St. Louis Scholarship recognizes students who demonstrate academic excellence and a commitment to advancing the geospatial intelligence profession. The scholarship is awarded annually by USGIF, a nonprofit educational foundation dedicated to supporting the GEOINT community through education, professional development, and workforce initiatives.
Pawar conducts research in the Remote Sensing Lab and is advised by Vasit Sagan, Ph.D., director of SLU's Geospatial Center. His research combines remote sensing and geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) to develop new methods for mapping manure management infrastructure at cattle operations. His work aims to improve livestock methane emissions accounting by providing operation-level activity data that can support more accurate agricultural greenhouse gas inventories.
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Rebecca Carter (Doisy College Health Sciences) was invited to join the Scientific Advisory Board of the HADDTS Foundation in March 2026 as a Scientific Advisory Board Member–Researcher. HADDTS (Hypotonia, Ataxia, Developmental Delay, and Tooth-Enamel Defects Syndrome) is a rare genetic disorder caused by mutations in the CTBP1 gene.
Carter’s invitation to the board grew out of her undergraduate research in the laboratory of Uthayashanker Ezekiel, Ph.D., at Saint Louis University. Her research investigating the effects of a HADDTS-associated CTBP1 mutation in neural stem cells was presented at the 2026 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting and published as an abstract in the Journal of Biological Chemistry: “Matrix Metalloproteinase-3 (MMP3) Expression is Suppressed in Neural Stem Cells Harboring CTBP1 Mutation and Affects Cell Migration.”
As a Scientific Advisory Board Member–Researcher, Carter provides scientific guidance on Foundation research initiatives. Most recently, she contributed to the development of the CTBP Interactome Atlas, an online resource mapping CTBP1 and CTBP2 interaction partners and their connections across areas of biomedical research. Carter provided recommendations regarding the scientific content, organization, terminology, and usability of the Atlas that were incorporated during its development and proposed the name ultimately adopted for the project. The Atlas is intended to support scientific outreach and identify potential connections between CTBP biology and research across multiple disease areas.
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Ananya Singla, (Public Health and Social Justice student) an undergraduate HMP student had her abstract accepted, and won an award at a national radiology conference for the abstract titled "Gamme Knife Radiosurgery for Trigeminal Neuralgia: Do Technicago Approach Variations Influence Pain Response and Numbness." Singla won the "Best Member in Training Abstract in the Functional Radiosurgery" category at the 2026 Radiosurgery Society Scientific Meeting in Orlando, Florida.
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Kevin Amemiya (Doisy College Health Sciences student) was honored as PA Student of the Year at the recent Missouri State Academy of PAs conference. The event honored faculty, students, and preceptors for their outstanding contributions to the PA profession and PA education.
Ibraheem Jawadi (Public Health and Social Justice student) submitted an abstract, which was accepted, to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (sponsored by the National Council on Undergraduate Research), and was invited to present the paper. The conference was held at VCU in Richmond, Virginia on April 13-15, and he presented the paper titled, "Healthcare Workplace Compassion Practices and their Associations with Patient-Care Provider Therapeutic Connections." Cheryl Rathert, Ph.D. (Health Management and Policy) was co-author and worked with Jawadi throughout the process.
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Sarah Liebowitz (Arts and Sciences student) presented Interprofessional Education Program student outcome data at the local Industrial–Organizational Psychology Poster Day at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, as well as at the Saint Louis University Doisy College of Health Sciences Research Symposium. This work earned third place overall in the Doisy poster competition, recognizing excellence in graduate scholarship.
The poster was titled “Impact of a Structured Interprofessional Education (IPE) Curriculum on Student Collaboration Skills, Self‑ and Team Efficacy. The presentation highlighted the Core Team IPE curriculum and examined students’ self‑reported confidence and collaborative competence following completion of each of the three IPE courses (IPE 2100, IPE 4200, and IPE 4900).
Zarah Robinson (College of Arts and Sciences student) had an article published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.