Georgia CTSA Recognizes Our Leaders

Top Left to Right: Carolyn Meltzer, Andrés J. García; Bottom Left to Right: Yajun Mei, Anne Fitzpatrick

Carolyn Meltzer, 2018 Gold Medal Award Recipient for the Association of University Radiologists

Carolyn, Metlzer, MD, director of Georgia CTSA Innovation Catalyst program, was named the 2018 Gold Medal Award Recipient for the Association of University Radiologists. The Gold Medal is awarded in recognition of unusually distinguished service or contributions to the Association of University Radiologists, academic radiology, or the field of radiology in general.  Congratulations!

The Georgia CTSA provides resources for start-up research projects through the Innovation Catalyst program. Innovation Catalyst offers funding for start-up research projects, better access to analytical tools, and education and training to clinical and translational investigators. Georgia CTSA provides the infrastructure and programmatic foundation to rapidly identify and invest in promising technologies and enhance collaborative opportunities among translational investigators and industry partners. A goal of Georgia CTSA is to catalyze development, validation, and commercialization of translational technologies.

Andrés J. García, Named Executive Director of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech

Andrés J. García, PhD, is a principal investigator for the Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance (CTSA). Garcia believes that the “Georgia CTSA’s innovative support of discovery and collaborative partnerships help to rapidly translate scientific discoveries and new technology, which positively impacts patient care in Georgia.” As part of the Georgia CTSA, Garcia brings in the expertise and support from Georgia Tech. Congratulations!

The Georgia CTSA is an inter-institutional magnet that concentrates basic, translational, and clinical research investigators, community clinicians, professional societies, and industry collaborators in dynamic clinical and translational research projects. Emory engaged three of its close academic partners – Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Tech, and UGA – to form the Georgia CTSA. This partnership, a strategic multi-institutional alliance, offers compelling, unique, and synergistic advantages to research and patients statewide.

Georgia CTSA is one of nearly 60 in a national consortium striving to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The consortium, funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Awards, shares a common vision to translate laboratory discoveries into treatments for patients, engage communities in clinical research efforts, and train the next generation of clinical investigators.

Yajun Mei, New Biostatistics, Epidemiology, & Research Design (BERD) Co-Director

Yajun Mei, associate professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, takes over as Georgia CTSA’s BERD co-director for Georgia Tech. Mei's research interests include change-point problems and sequential analysis in Mathematical Statistics; sensor networks and information theory in Engineering; as well as longitudinal data analysis, random effects models, and clinical trials in Biostatistics. Welcome!

The current BERD co-director at Georgia Tech, Brani Vidakovic, has accepted a two-year position at NSF in Washington, DC, starting in September, as program director for statistics. Congratulations!

A key goal of the BERD program is to provide value-added assistance to markedly improve the quality of the translational and clinical research of Emory University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Georgia investigators. This is accomplished by having highly trained, service oriented BERD personnel from Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health, MSM’s Clinical Research Center & Research Center for Clinical & Translational Research, Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and UGA’s College of Public Health available to assist early career researchers in a timely manner. To request a BERD consult, click here.

Anne Fitzpatrick, New Pediatrics Program Director

Anne Fitzpatrick, PhD, RN, CPNP, MSCR, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory, was recently named the new director of the Georgia CTSA Pediatrics program. Fitzpatrick has published more than 90 publications in the field of asthma, and has served as principal investigator in numerous NIH-funded studies. Her research has established that pediatric asthma is more heterogeneous than previously thought, leading to varied responses to one-size-fits-all treatment approaches. She is also a Georgia CTSA Master of Science in Clinical Research (MSCR) graduate and member of the Georgia CTSA Research Education Programs Executive Committee. Congratulations!

The Pediatric Clinical Research Unit at Egleston is designed to provide the necessary infrastructure for investigators conducting pediatric clinical research and is a pediatric clinical interaction research site of Georgia CTSA. The center improves the ability of pediatric researchers to perform innovative research while providing patients and their families with increased access to leading-edge clinical trials.