by Bill Snyder
Gautam (Jay) Bhave, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medicine and Cell & Developmental Biology, is the recipient of the 2020 Grant W. Liddle Award for “exemplary leadership in the promotion of scientific research” at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The Liddle Award, awarded annually by the VUMC House Staff, was announced Thursday, June 11, during the 38th annual Research Forum, which features research conducted at VUMC by trainees including medical, nursing, pharmacy and allied health professional students, resident physicians and fellows.
Heather Grome, MD, a third-year infectious disease fellow who is pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health, won the 2020 Elliot V. Newman Prize for best abstract, “Association of STI Diagnosis with Incident HIV in a Southern Statewide Cohort.”
A 40–member review committee consisting of VUMC faculty members who are actively involved in clinical and basic science research selected the top six abstracts from among more than 160 that were submitted.
This year with COVID-19 and social distancing, the Research Forum was pre-recorded and presented online during a Department of Medicine Grand Rounds. This year’s forum was moderated by Christianne Roumie, MD, MPH, associate professor of Medicine and the 2019 recipient of the Liddle Award.
The Liddle Award is named for the late Grant W. Liddle, MD, an internationally known endocrinologist who chaired the Department of Medicine from 1968 to 1983.
Bhave, who has been at Vanderbilt since 2010, has published extensively on the assembly and function of basement membranes and the extracellular matrix, particularly in kidney disease.
“Dr. Bhave has guided many young investigators with incredible success, all the while carving out a new niche in nephrology,” said JP Arroyo, MD, PhD, a nephrology fellow who nominated Bhave for the award and who served as one of the research forum co-chairs.
“I’ve really just been lucky in having really good mentees,” Bhave said. All the trainees at Vanderbilt “are very smart, hard-working and have great ideas … It’s been a pleasure for me to work with (them).”
The Newman Prize is named for Elliot Voss Newman, MD, a distinguished cardiologist, scientist and clinical teacher who founded the Clinical Research Center at VUMC in 1961.
Grome earned her medical degree from the West Virginia School of Medicine in Morgantown and completed her internal medicine residency at VUMC.
After completing her fellowship and MPH degree, Grome said she plans to join the Epidemiology Intelligence Service at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Thursday’s Forum also featured interviews with Hernan Gonzalez, MS, who won the top Basic Science Research abstract, and with the four finalists: Benedicto Fernandes, MD, Mona Mashayekhi, MD, PhD, Jaclyn Lee, BS, and Hiral Master, PT, PhD, MPH.
