Kim Orth, PhD, paused in mid-Zoom to reach for a plaque behind her that contains words to live – and practice science – by.

The distinguished biochemist and microbiologist from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center earned the award in 2003 from the Beckman Institute as a junior investigator and assistant professor. And it contains a quote from late chemist and inventor Dr. Arnold O. Beckman that she embraces to this day.

“It reads, ‘Everything in moderation, including moderation itself,’ ” said Dr. Orth, the keynote speaker Friday at USF Health Research Day. “You really need to have a balance.”

That philosophy has served the heralded professor of microbiology and biochemistry well in her career. As an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Orth runs the Orth Lab, is a W.W. Caruth Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research and holds the Earl A. Forsythe Chair in Biomedical Science. Her many honors over the past 20 years include a place on the Celebrating Women Wall at the UT Southwestern Medical Center (2022), being named an American Society of Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer (2021-23), and a Merck Award in 2018. In 2020, Dr. Orth also was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.

But early on, Dr. Orth learned about the need for moderation, and balance, the hard way when she began graduate school at UCLA. She was equipped with a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from Texas A&M and big dreams to chart her own path – much to the consternation of her family back home in the Lone Star State.

Unfortunately, she found herself unprepared for the culture shock of life in Los Angeles, and despite her success in labs working with fruit flies, Dr. Orth pushed herself past her limits. Wanting to enhance her graduate-student income, she took a second job working the night shift in a dorm. In short order, she found herself mentally and physically burned out – and dropping out of school altogether.

She returned home and went to work as a secretary for her father, who had not been keen on his daughter’s scientific pursuits – as she chronicled in a 2018 personal essay about her life and career challenges in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.  It is a story she tells to give inspiration – and hope – to young scientists.

“When I went to graduate school at UCLA, I didn’t have any tools,” she explained during a recent interview. “I didn’t know you were supposed to sleep so many hours a night, and nobody was telling me these kinds of things – like ‘Make sure you eat and exercise and get your sleep.’ So you go out there gung ho and don’t have any of these checks and balances in your brain. At the time, there was no Internet. And there wasn’t anybody telling me, ‘You need to be responsible and do these things.’ ”

Of course, Dr. Orth eventually found success by striking a healthy balance and not entirely allowing moderation to guide her at all times. While learning to take better her of herself, she re-set her sights and pushed hard to excel, leaving her secretary job to work as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute technician with a solid salary at the Protein Chemistry Core, UT Southwestern Medical Center.

It was the first step in what became a prestigious lab career, which saw her earn a PhD, marry a loving and supportive fellow scientist, Ron Taussig, complete four post-doctoral research projects while becoming pregnant and giving birth to the couple’s two children, and learning how to balance science and motherhood.

As she wrote in her essay, “I fortunately had the opportunity to spend time with other women scientists, some of them moms, during a once-a-month ‘ladies’ lunch. This was not only a very valuable ‘tool’ for my sanity, but I learned about many practical tools that helped to make ‘things’ work. Throughout my career, I continue to interact with other female colleagues on regular bases for many of these same practical reasons. All in all, my scientific productivity did not suffer as a working mom, but my efficiency did increase.”

There is far more to Dr. Orth’s story and fascinating research. But one example of that research offers a window onto the balance theme.

“I’m a biochemist by training and so I basically try to understand how, at the molecular level, bacterial pathogens are talking to our host cells and basically manipulating them,” she explained. “But what happened was we uncovered a new way for molecules to manipulate each other. We realized that a particular enzyme wasn’t only found in bacteria but also animals.”

Wondering what effect it had in animals, Dr. Orth and her colleagues studied the enzyme in flies. What they learned was that the cells one has for a lifetime are forced to recover after undergoing stress. “We found that if we got rid of a gene in flies, their eyes could not recover normally,” she said.

Next they experimented on mice. Removing the gene made it impossible for them to recover from stress.

“So we’ve uncovered this mechanism that’s like a rheostat,” she said. “It allows us to deal with daily stresses all the time. These cells that we use our whole live in our brain, our eyes, our heart muscles, whatever, they have to have the resilience to handle the daily stresses and then recover.

“If you don’t have this ‘rheostat’ mechanism, it appears that you can’t recover as well. What I can tell you is that when the cells in your body get hyper-stressed, they shut everything down. And to recover, they have to rebuild all of those things that were there before. This mechanism allows you to have a buffer, so everything isn’t shut down.”

That would take a toll on a body over a lifetime. It’s another reminder that moderation and balance are far preferable – even when it comes to cells.

Dr. Kim Orth, Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center, will deliver the Roy H. Behnke Keynote Address at #USFHealth Research Day on Friday, March 3 at 9:00 a.m. in the USF Marshall Student Center Student Oval Theater.

— By Dave Scheiber for USF Health News 

A wide range of science filled the Ballroom at the Marshall Student Center, showcasing the groundbreaking work of rising research stars taking part in the annual USF Health Research Day.

Check out more photos on Flickr! 

This year’s event, held Feb. 19, featured nearly 330 students, residents, fellows and post-doctoral researchers from across USF Health.

“This event gets better every year,” said Phillip Marty, PhD, vice president for USF Health Research.

Presenters arrived early to set up their posters in the Marshall Student Center Ballroom.

“I’m always impressed with the level of research that is presented at our Research Day,” Dr. Marty said. “Our faculty are engaged in important research, which translates directly to our students, graduate students, residents and trainees who are presenting here today. This is a great training ground for the rest of their careers.”

This year’s slate of presenters showed more students and trainees and slightly fewer faculty, Dr. Marty said, perhaps a reflection of the event’s return to its roots of showcasing science learners.

The day-long event brings together researchers from across all USF Health colleges, programs and disciplines, as well as guest researchers from USF programs studying the science of health. Beginning the day are the oral presenters, the few whose work earned them an invitation to present their work orally. This year’s 11 selected students presented their work at the 7th Annual Joseph Krzanowski, PhD, USF Health Invited Oral Presentations Session, They were: Ngozichukwuka Agu; Faris Galambo, BS; Krishna Reddy; Alison E Roth, MPH; Stephanie Ciarlone; Jaymin Kathiriya; Jared Tur; April Lussier; Abby Pribish, BS; Jessica M Gordon; and Rachel G. Sinkey, MD.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2xvVEL6YP4

Alison Roth won best overall for her oral presentation.

The full poster presentation session followed, filling the Ballroom with hustle and bustle as researchers stood next to their posters tacked up onto bulletin boards and judges walked from poster to poster evaluating each presentation and asking lead researchers questions about their work or to further explain their methods, results and conclusions. As always, for those who are new researchers, USF Health Research Day is a key event for acting as a practice run for future national research meetings.

Dr. Charles Lockwood judges the work of Kristen Marcet, second-year medical student.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVsBzI_Es-E

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDiMw339ToQ

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MyRIU_ua7E

The day included visiting 12th grader Patricia Askins (Sarasota High School) presenting her work on anticancer drugs from her time in the lab of Subhra Mohapatra, PhD, associate professor in the USF Department of Molecular Medicine.

Students from Berkeley Preparatory School, showcased their own award-winning posters.

After a lunch break, the Roy H. Behnke Distinguished Lectureship began. This year’s guest lecturer was Robert H. Brown, Jr., MD, DPhil, professor and chair of neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Medical School. His research is devoted to identifying gene defects that lead to neuromuscular diseases.  Dr. Brown’s lecture was titled “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis:  Therapeutic Insights from Genetics.”

Dr. Robert Brown

From left. Dr. Bryan Bognar, Dr. Phil Marty, Dr. Paul Sanberg, Dr. Charles Lockwood, Dr. Clifton Gooch, Dr. Robert Brown, and Dr. John Sinnott.

At the conclusion of the talk, the much-anticipated awards were presented. Winners for the USF Health Research Day 2016 are:

Best MCOM Graduate Student Poster Presentations:

Doctoral Student Poster Presentation: Allergy and Immunology: Jillian Whelan

Doctoral Student Poster Presentation: Cancer Biology: Stephanie Buttermore

Doctoral Student Poster Presentation: Cardiovascular and Clinical Science Research: Natascha Alves

Masters Student Interdisciplinary Research: Kathryn Fomuke and Andrew McGill

Doctoral Student Poster Presentation: Molecular and Cellular Biology: Jaymin Kathiriya

Best MCOM Medical Student Presentations:

Med I Student Poster Presentation: Interdisciplinary Research: Nima Hosseinian

Med II Student Poster Presentation: Interdisciplinary Research: Curtis Gravenmier

Med II Student Poster Presentation: Interdisciplinary Research: Kristen Marcet

Med II Student Poster Presentations, Case Studies and Chart Reviews: Andrew Lai, MPH, Anthony Clark, and Luis Perez-Mena

Med III Student Poster Presentation, Case Study and Chart Review: Kyle Achors

Med III Student Poster Presentation, Empirical Study: Laura Kidd

Med IV Student Poster Presentation Case Study and Chart Review: Cheryl Godcharles

Best MCOM Medical Resident Poster Presentations:

MCOM Resident Poster Presentations: Interdisciplinary Case Studies: Jennifer Divine, MD, and Joanna Robles, MD

MCOM Resident Poster Presenation: Case Study and Chart Review: Karina Vivar, MD

MCOM Fellow Poster Presentation: Case Study and Chart Review: Sangeetha Prabhakaran, MD

Best College of Nursing Poster Presentation:

CON Graduate Student Poster Presentation: Nisha Vijayakumar, BDS, MPH

Best College of Pharmacy Poster Presentations:

Graduate Student Poster Presentation: Jeffrey Burgess

Postdoctoral Poster Presentation: Leslie Sandusky, PhD

Best College of Public Health Poster Presentations:

Graduate Student: Umonighu Michael Bubu (epidemiology and biostatistics)

Graduate Student: Athena Failla (global health)

Graduate Student: Kate LeGrand (global health)

Graduate Student: DeAnne Turner (community and family health)

Graduate Student: Tora Suggs (community and family health)

Graduate Student: Kristina Harand (environmental and occupational health)

Post-doctoral Student: Christopher Rice, PhD

Best Undergraduate Student Poster Presentations:

Allergy, Immunology and Infectious Diseases: Priyanshi Patel

Neurosciences: Sophia Abraham

Cancer and Clinical Sciences: Mevin Mathew

Interdisciplinary Sciences: Asgard Kaleb Marroquin 

College of Pharmacy: Neurosciences: Anjanet Loon, and Abdulah Barakat

Top Awards

USF Health Vice President’s Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Oral Presentation: Alison Roth, MPH

MCOM Outstanding Postdoctoral Poster Presentation: Aurelie Joly-Amado, PhD

MCOM Outstanding Fellow Poster Presentation: Liliana Bustamante

MCOM Outstanding Resident Poster Presentation: Anne Mattingly, MD (oncological sciences)

Outstanding Global Pediatric Behavioral Health Poster Presentation: Sophia Zavrou

Outstanding Innovations in Medicine Poster Presentation: Rose Tillis

Watson Clinic Award to a Fourth-Year Medical Student: Sriram Velamuri

Dr. Christopher P. Phelps Memorial Fund Annual Morsani COM Graduate Student Travel Award: Krishna Reddy

A field of research fills the Marshall Student Center Ballroom.

USF Health Research Day 2016.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Communications

Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Video by Sandra C. Roa, USF Health Communications

The hubbub started early Feb. 20 as young scientists filled the Marshall Center Ballroom to post their research posters. It was Tampa’s coldest morning so far, and veteran Research Day organizers agreed that moving the event to the Marshall Center was wise, recalling the chilly, windy, concrete-laden breezeways that held Research Day for more than two decades before.

Inside the warm Ballroom, rows and rows of bulletin boards held the work of students, residents, fellows and post-doctoral researchers from across USF Health. Along an entire wall were the posters of middle school students from the Villages and Berkley Prep. In total, more than 360 rising research stars presented their work at this year’s USF Health Research Day.

Marking the 25th time USF Health’s emerging scientists have come together to present their projects, and judges scrutinizing the data and deciding the winners, the day offered an exceptional celebratory feel, said Phillip Marty, PhD, vice president for USF Health Research.

“This event has always been successful for spotlighting our accomplished and aspiring researchers, and today’s Research Day feels especially exciting,” Dr. Marty said. “We’ve welcomed hundreds of researchers over the years and seen many of their foundational projects grow into more formidable work. I’m quite proud of the level of research that keeps coming to this event and growing from it.”

Banners, signage, materials and goodie bags were emblazoned with the specially designed art element for the 25^th anniversary. Inside the Ballroom and projected on a large screen mounted above the crowd were images from Research Days of the past, offering everyone a chance to reminisce.

And there were no paper programs listing researchers and posters this year. Instead, organizers used the 25^th anniversary event to offer an interactive app called Eventmobi that not only listed the 360 posters and researchers but also allowed attendees to map out their own customized itinerary for the day, allowed presenters to update their own bios with additional information, photos and descriptions of their work, helped push out notifications such as “be at your poster; time for judging” for presenters, and offered a social media component for sharing news and excitement of the day.

The day-long event brings together researchers from across all USF Health colleges, programs and disciplines, as well as guest researchers from USF programs studying the science of health. Beginning the day are the oral presenters, the few whose work earned them an invitation to present their work orally. This year’s 11 selected students presented their work at the 6th Annual Joseph Krzanowski, PhD, USF Health Invited Oral Presentations Session, They were: Jillian Whelan; Glenna S. Brewster, RN, MS; April Lussier; Joseph Smith; Prerna Malaney, M.S; Byron Moran, MD; Lauren A. Terpak, MS; Nicole Falk-Smith; Nolan Kline; Steven B. Housley, MS; and Zhiwei Zhou.

Following the oral presentations, the full poster presentation session began in the Ballroom. Abstracts tacked onto bulletin boards filled the Marshall Center Ballroom, evidence of the breadth of groundbreaking and collaborative work taking place. For two hours, classmates, colleagues, mentors, faculty and the curious make their way from abstract to abstract. Judges are also there, evaluating each presentation and conferring with lead researchers to further explain their methods, results and conclusions. Many of the budding researchers use the event as an opportunity for collaboration and as a “practice run” for future national research meetings.

College of Nursing doctoral candidate Glenna Brewster, RN, MS, presented her work on depression in older adults.

Dr. Summer Decker and Ashok Shiani, a fourth-year medical student.

The day included students from the Villages and Berkeley Preparatory School, who showcased their own award-winning posters.

Berkeley Prep students with science teacher Dr. Nicole Ackerson (standing far left), who graduated from the USF MCOM Biomedical Sciences program. Her mentor while at USF, Dr. Patricia Kruk, (standing far right) MCOM Vice Chair, Pathology & Cell Biology, reconnected with Dr. Ackerson and her class of young scientists.

After a lunch break, everyone headed to the Oval Theatre for the USF Health Research Day features the Roy H. Behnke Distinguished Lectureship. In introductory remarks, Charles J. Lockwood, MD, senior vice president for USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine, set the stage for today’s research initiatives, urging today’s researchers to look at the true value of their work.

“Our research is great, but more is not better,” Dr. Lockwood said. “Our research has to be different materially than in the past. We have to do value-based research. We don’t only produce a new device or drug or diagnostic test that marginally improves outcomes and actually raises costs. But, rather, improves outcomes and lowers costs. And value needs to be used in everything we do in the future.”

This year’s guest lecturer was David Swerdlow, MD, associate director and medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His talk was titled: “What are the critical epidemiologic questions that need to be answered at the start of an epidemic:  What we learned from Influenza A (H1N1) and MERS and how that applies to the Ebola outbreak.”

At the conclusion of the talk, the much-anticipated awards are presented. This year’s winners are:

Best MCOM Graduate Student Poster Presentations:

Allergy and Immunology: Nhan N. Tu

Cancer Biology: Mai Mohamed

Cardiovascular and Clinical Science Research: Wei Deng

Masters Student Interdisciplinary Research: Alexandra Jenkins

Molecular and Cell Biology: Jaymin J. Kathiriya

Public Health Research: Jennifer Greene

Best MCOM Medical Student Presentations:

Med I Student Poster Presentation: Interdisciplinary Research: Joseph Leung

Med II Student Poster Presentation, Case Studies and Chart Reviews: Cady Welch

Med II Student Poster Presentation, Clinical Science Research: Yumeng Zhang

Med II Student Poster Presentation, Education and Public Health Research: Robert Ackerman

Med III Student Poster Presentation: Interdisciplinary Research: Thomas Sutton

Best Undergraduate Student Poster Presentations:

Interdisciplinary Research: Alexander Czachor

Molecular and Cellular Biology: Esha Patel

Neuroscience I: Nina Margarita Slouha

Neuroscience II: Nicholas Johnson

Neuroscience II: Nima Hosseinian

Best College of Pharmacy Poster Presentation:

Graduate Student: Cameron Durlacher

Postdoctoral: Kalyan Chapalamadugu, PhD

Best College of Public Health Poster Presentations:

Graduate Student: Omonigho Michael Bubu

Graduate Student: Shana Green

Graduate Student: Amruta Mhashilkar, MD

Graduate Student: Rema Ramakrishnan

Graduate Student: Jessica Ryan

Graduate Student: Phaedra Thomas

Graduate Student: Coralia Vazquez-Otero, JD

Post-doctoral Student: Christopher Rice, PhD

Top Awards

USF Health Vice President’s Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Oral Presentation: Prerna Malaney

Prerna Malaney.

MCOM Outstanding Postdoctoral Poster Presentation: Sandra Acosta, PhD

MCOM Outstanding Fellow Poster Presentation: Shannon Ho, MD

MCOM Best Resident Poster Presentation: Rachel Sinkey, MD

Watson Clinic Award to a Fourth-Year Medical Student: Travis Dailey

Dr. Christopher P. Phelps Memorial Fund Annual Morsani COM Graduate Student Travel Award: Lisa Kirouac

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Communications

Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Video by Katy Hennig, USF Communications

U-Stream by Klaus Herdocia, Mihaela Madsen and Elizabeth Peacock, USF Health Communications

The emerging science represented at this year’s USF Health Research Day is astounding.

But only by attending yourself will you see array of science and fully appreciate the strength of research taking place at USF Health.

Here are the details:

• Keynote speaker Howard McLeod at 1 p.m. will be Live Streamed via USF Health Facebook page.

• Nearly 340 presenters are slated to present their work this year at the Marshall Center.

• Second year for presentations from the new College of Pharmacy students.

• Charter school students from The Villages are returning for a second year to showcase their own award-winning posters.

About the 23nd Annual USF Health Research Day:
USF Health Research Day is an annual event that showcases the work of graduate and postgraduate students and residents from throughout USF Health, as well as across campus. Judges make their rounds to each poster presentation, asking the lead researchers to further explain their methods, results and conclusions before deciding on the award-worthy entrants. In addition, a leading national researcher provides the Roy H. Behnke, MD, Distinguished Lectureship.

The day-long event is a prime opportunity for collaboration, since it bridges several colleges, schools and disciplines, and acts as a perfect “practice run” for many of the presenters whose work may garner spots at national research meetings.

Location:
Researchers participating this year will display their work in the second-floor ballroom of the Marshall Center and the annual keynote address will take place in the Marshall Center’s Oval Theatre.

Getting there:
You can ride to the Marshall Center on regularly scheduled USF Bull Runner shuttle buses (free with a USF ID). Shuttle B’s route picks up in front of the College of Public Health and near the loading dock area of USF Health. Shuttle D’s route picks up near the crosswalk on Holly Drive at USF Health.

Keynote Speaker: 17th Annual Roy H. Behnke, MD, Distinguished Lectureship
Presented at 1:00 pm in the Marshall Center’s Oval Theatre.
Howard McLeod, PharmD
Professor of pharmacogenomics and director of the Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Title of talk: “Using the Genome to Guide Therapy”

Dr. Howard McLeod is the principal investigator for the CREATE Pharmacogenetics Research Network, a member of the NIH funded Pharmacogenetics Research Network, and is a member of the FDA Committee on Clinical Pharmacology. He directs the Pharmacogenetics for Every Nation Initiative that aims to help developing countries use genetic information to improve National Drug Formulary decisions.

With more than has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers on pharmacogenomics, applied therapeutics, or clinical pharmacology, much of Dr. McLeod’s aims to integrate genetics principles into clinical practice to advance individualized medicine.

Dr. McLeod is the Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor of Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the director of the UNC Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy. He holds additional appointments in the UNC School of Medicine and the Lineberger Cancer Center.
Need more info?
About USF Health Research Day: www.health.usf.edu/research
About the USF Bull Runner shuttle service: www.usf.edu/parking_services