Awards & Recognitions – April 2024
M. Gazi Yasargil Lecture
Barrow President and CEO Michael T. Lawton, MD, will deliver the esteemed M. Gazi Yasargil Lecture on Saturday, May 4 at the 2024 American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting in Chicago. This lectureship was established to honor the legacy of acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr. Yasargil, whose microsurgical prowess helped transform the practice of cerebrovascular surgery. Among the previous speakers are Dr. Yasargil himself and Barrow Emeritus President and CEO Robert F. Spetzler, MD.
DoD Grant
The Department of Defense (DoD) recently awarded a $1.48 million grant to Artak Tovmasyan, PharmD, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Translational Neuroscience at Barrow, and his team. The grant supports their work on MnP3, a novel agent offering new hope in treating glioblastoma by enhancing the effectiveness of radiotherapy while protecting healthy brain tissue.
Fortune Top Major Teaching Hospital
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, the home of Barrow Neurological Institute, is tied for No. 13 nationally and No. 1 in Arizona on Fortune Magazine’s 2024 list of Top Major Teaching Hospitals in the United States. Barrow is known for some of the largest and most sought-after neuroscience training programs in the country. This list is part of Fortune’s annual 100 Top Hospitals ranking, in which our hospital has been included nine times. The ranking is based on clinical outcomes, patient experience, community health survey performance, operational efficiency, and financial health.
AAN Practice Leadership Program
Ayushi Chugh, MD, a neurologist in the Gregory W. Fulton ALS and Neuromuscular Disease Center at Barrow, was recently presented with a graduation certificate by Chair of Neurology Brad Racette, MD, to celebrate her successful completion of the American Academy of Neurology’s Practice Leadership Program. This highly competitive program accepted only eight participants, including Dr. Chugh, into its 2022-2023 cohort. The multi-month program aims to equip each participant with the knowledge and tools to better manage their practice and lead and empower their staff.
AANS Zeiss Brain Tumor Research Award
Irakliy Abramov, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow under the mentorship of Mark Preul, MD, in the Loyal and Edith Davis Neurosurgical Research Laboratory at Barrow, has won the Zeiss Brain Tumor Research Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS). Dr. Abramov has been invited to give an oral presentation of his award-winning abstract, “Intraoperative confocal laser endomicroscopy during resection of low-grade and nonenhancing brain tumors in eloquent brain region,” during the Tumor Rapid Fire Abstract Session of the AANS Annual Scientific Meeting in Chicago.
Fred Gentilli Award
Mark Pacult, MD, a PGY-5 neurosurgery resident at Barrow, received the Fred Gentilli Clinical Excellence Award at the 2024 North American Skull Base Society meeting for his abstract titled: “Unplanned hospital readmissions following transsphenoidal surgery for Cushing’s disease from a multicenter pituitary surgery outcomes registry of 26 surgeons.” The abstract featured research led by neurosurgeon Andrew Little, MD, co-director of the Barrow Pituitary Center.
Textbook Publication
Springer Publishing recently released the second edition of “Advanced Physiology and Pathophysiology: Essentials for Clinical Practice,” a textbook edited by Barrow nurse practitioner Linda Herrmann, PhD. Manny Mejia, an acute care nurse practitioner specializing in neuroendovascular treatments at Barrow, contributed to the “Gerontological Considerations” portion of the “Blood and Clotting” chapter. The first edition of the textbook won the American Journal of Nursing’s First Place Book of the Year for Advanced Practice Nursing in 2020 and a prestigious Prose Award for Nursing and Allied Health Sciences in 2022. Springer says the second edition “offers several new features that add to its value in preparing the student clinician to care for patients with a broad variety of disorders effectively.”
4th Anniversary of ‘Seven Series’
Barrow President and CEO Dr. Michael T. Lawton‘s “Seven Series” project celebrated its fourth anniversary. Dr. Lawton launched these narrated video case studies at the start of the pandemic to help neurosurgeons keep their technical edge while other educational opportunities and elective surgeries were paused. Since the launch of the project, “Seven Series” videos have accumulated more than 460,000 views and a total watch time of nearly 25,000 hours.
Highly Ranked Scholar
Elliott Mufson, PhD, a professor in the Department of Translational Neuroscience at Barrow, has been named a highly ranked scholar by ScholarGPS. The ranking recognizes not only his prolific publication record but also the high impact of his work (citations) and the outstanding quality of his scholarly contributions (h-index), placing him in the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide. Dr. Mufson is ranked No. 79 for Alzheimer’s disease, No. 21 for cognitive deficit, and No. 15 for mild cognitive impairment.