We are saddened to hear of the passing of Dr. Daniel Laskin, professor and chair emeritus of the VCU Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Dr. Laskin joined VCU in 1983 where he served as chief of the division of oral and maxillofacial surgery and chair of the Department of Dentistry. Dr. Abubaker, chairman of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, states it best in that, "Dr. Laskin was a giant in life who taught those who knew him well how to be dedicated to our profession and to our fellow human beings." Our deepest condolences to Dr. Laskin's many colleagues, friends, and family members.

It is with heavy hearts that we share the unexpected passing of Santosh Padala, MD. Dr. Padala was an Assistant Professor of Medicine specializing in Cardiac Electrophysiology, who joined the VCU Health System in 2015 as a clinical cardiac electrophysiology fellow and became a member of the faculty in 2017. He made a mark early on as a fellow, twice receiving the prestigious Joseph T. Doyle Research Award during his Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship at Albany Medical Center before going on to win an ‘Outstanding Fellow Award’ during his Cardiac Electrophysiology fellowship at VCU. He later received the ‘Outstanding Teacher Award’ from the VCU Cardiology Fellows in 2019 and 2021. In addition to his many professional accomplishments and promising research career, Dr. Padala was also a caring provider, popular amongst his patients and colleagues alike. Our deepest condolences to Dr. Padala's many colleagues, friends, and family members.

Congratulations to Dr. Azhar Rafiq for being awarded the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal! Dr. Rafiq established the entire agency's Occupational Health operations as a cloud based electronic medical record system and has managed it for the past 10+ years. In addition, he single handedly completed the design, development and execution of COVID vaccination web based tools including survey and data collection across the entire 90,000 employee population. This included daily reporting to the executive dashboard and weekly reporting on behalf of NASA to the White House team at the Office of Management and Budget. Congratulations Dr. Rafiq and thank you for your exceptional contributions to the mission of NASA!

Travis Sullivan, MD was awarded 1st place in the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (ACS COT) Residents Trauma Papers Regional Competition on December 11 for his paper "Predicting the Probability of Blood Transfusion after Pediatric Injury using a Bayesian Belief Network".

Congratulations to Lucas Keller-Biehl, MD and colleagues for having their abstract "30-Day Colectomy Outcomes by Race within the VA System" accepted for a podium presentation at the 2022 SAGES Annual Meeting that will be held March 16-19 in Denver, CO.

Lucas Keller-Biehl MD, Alex Simmonds MD, Adam Khader MD PhD, William Timmerman MD, Michael Amendola MD MEHP FSVS FACS

Toyin Akande, MD, a post doc in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, has been awarded the Pauley Heart Center Pilot Project Funding. The Pauley Pilot Grants program provides financial support for successful projects that meet three criteria: an innovative idea to improve cardiovascular health, one that is feasible in 12 to 18 months and one that has the potential to attract additional funding. Congratulations, Dr. Akande!

Did you know that 3 out of 4 children experiment with fire? Michael Feldman, MD, Director of the Evans-Haynes Burn Center, teamed up with the Henrico County Fire Department for their Juvenile Firesetter Intervention Video where they discuss the impact of burn injuries to discourage youth from playing with fire. Great work, Dr. Feldman!

The VCU Program for Global Surgery and the Global Surgery Student Alliance at VCU held their monthly Global Health Seminar Series on December 15. December's guest speaker featured Dr. Gonzalo Bearman, MD, MPH, FACP, FSHEA, FIDSA, Chair of the Division of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Bearman has led critical efforts to address the COVID-19 Pandemic on research, clinical and operational fronts. He has assumed various roles for VCU Health including VCU Medical Center Incident Command Center Infectious Diseases/ Hospital Infection Prevention Program COVID 19 Director and member of the Virginia Disaster Management Advisory Committee to Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Monday, January 17 – 11am to 12pm