Vanderbilt University’s Cyndya Shibao, M.D., MSCI, has received a Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Michael DeBaun, M.D., Ph.D., vice chair for clinical research in the Department of Pediatrics, has received a Clinical Research Mentorship award from the foundation for a project with third-year medical student Leah Vance.
Shibao is an assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology. She earned a Master of Science degree in Clinical Investigation at Vanderbilt and is an investigator in the Vanderbilt Autonomic Dysfunction Center.
She is among 17 physician-scientists nationwide who received three-year, $486,000 Clinical Scientist Development Awards this year to help them transition to independent research careers. Shibao is studying racial differences in the vagal control of glucose homeostasis.
This year’s mentorship program will support 10 teams of medical students and physician-scientists who previously received Clinical Scientist Development Awards. Each team will receive $64,800 for one-year research projects. The medical students take a year off to participate full-time in the research.
DeBaun is the J.C. Peterson, M.D., Professor of Pediatric Pulmonology and directs the Vanderbilt-Meharry–Matthew Walker Center for Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease. He received a Clinical Scientist Development Award in 1999.
Vance earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She received a Simon Collier Travel Grant to work in Argentina with the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, and has taken courses through the Graduate Student Institute of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
Her sister, Elizabeth Vance Randolph, completed her pediatric residency at Vanderbilt this year.
DeBaun and Vance will conduct a three-site clinical trial to assess the feasibility of inhaled corticosteroid use to prevent the recurrence of acute chest syndrome in children with sickle cell disease who are between the ages of 1 and 4.
Other Vanderbilt winners of the Clinical Scientist Development Award are Michael Cooper, M.D., Utpal Davé, M.D., Kevin Ess, M.D., Ph.D., and Annette Kim, M.D., Ph.D.
