Melanie Königshoff, an MD, PhD, and Matthew Neal, an MD, are newly elected members of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). They are among 100 members elected in 2023 to one of the most esteemed honor societies of physician-scientists.

Königshoff, professor of medicine, focuses her research on deciphering the mechanisms involved in lung repair and regeneration to identify novel therapeutic targets for age-related chronic lung diseases, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Neal, the Roberta G. Simmons Associate Professor of Surgery, runs a translational research program focused on hemostasis and thrombosis following injury, and his basic science laboratory studies platelet response and mechanisms of immunothrombosis.

Congratulations also go to these ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Awardees, who are assistant professors of medicine: Cary Boyd-Shiwarski, an MD, PhD, and Mark E. Snyder, an MD. Utibe R. Essien, an MD, MPH who recently moved from Pitt to UCLA, also received the award. Richard P. Ramonell, an MD assistant professor of medicine, was named an ASCI Emerging-Generation Awardee.

Four Pitt Med faculty members have been inducted into the Association of American Physicians (AAP), an honorary society for physicians with outstanding credentials in basic or translational biomedical research.

Stephen Chan, an MD, PhD and Vitalant Professor of Vascular Medicine, is director of the Vascular Medicine Institute. Chan’s research uses bioinformatics and experimental reagents to accelerate translational discovery in pulmonary hypertension. He is also leading a research team exploring cardiovascular links to dementia and a treatment for jet lag.

Pamela Moalli, an MD, PhD professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and of bioengineering, is director of the Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery. She leads a team that won the $1 million Magee Prize sponsored by the Richard King Mellon Foundation. Moalli’s group focuses on the development of biomimetic biomaterials to improve outcomes of gynecologic surgery for girls and women.

Page Pennell, an MD, the Henry B. Higman Professor of Neurology and chair of that department, came to Pitt from Harvard University in 2021. She researches maternal health and fetal outcomes of women with epilepsy, antiseizure medication use during pregnancy and the effects of neuroactive steroids on seizure provocation.

Mary Phillips is an MD/MD (Cantab), the Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Professor in Psychotic Disorders, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, and a professor of clinical and translational science and bioengineering. She directs the Center for Research on Translational and Developmental Affective Neuroscience. Her research uses neuroimaging techniques to explain abnormalities in circuits of the human brain associated with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder.

Read more from the Summer 2023 issue.