NUCATS Announces 2023 KL2 Scholars Cohort
Three Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine early career faculty members have been named NUCATS Institute KL2 scholars.
Johnny Berona, PhD, research assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a member of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH); Chiagozie Pickens, MD, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care; and Ha Ngan “Milkie” Vu, PhD, assistant professor of Preventive Medicine in the Division of Behavioral Medicine, join a diverse group of past and current scholars.
The Multidisciplinary Career Development Program (KL2) is a National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS)-sponsored career development award supporting early career faculty at Northwestern. It is designed to train a diverse workforce of investigators to drive future innovation and implement effective clinical and translational research.
The program includes robust mentoring teams to assess the educational needs of the individual scholars and to provide them with personalized career development opportunities. In addition, it provides career development resources (formal coursework, peer mentoring, and career guidance) to scholars across disparate areas of expertise.
The KL2 scholars program is a tremendous opportunity for me to be connected with the mentorship, sponsorship and resources necessary to launch a career as an independent translational scientist.”
“It’s an honor and a significant career milestone to be named a KL2 scholar,” says Vu, who was also recently selected as an NIH Health Disparities Research Institute Scholar. “Given the program's outstanding reputation and the successful history of KL2 Scholars, I am eager to leverage the resources and opportunities it offers.”
Vu will use her KL2 grant as a foundation for becoming a leading independent researcher who develops and implements culturally relevant, evidence-based digital health interventions to reduce cancer health disparities experienced by Asian Americans and underserved populations.
My roles as a clinician and a researcher inform each other, which is especially important for anyone working on suicide-related outcomes as the two are so interconnected.”
Pickens’ KL2 project will create preliminary data for an NIH application to define mechanisms by which lung microbial communities influence the host immune response and contribute to devastating lung injury in pneumonia.
Berona’s work will inform the development of a personalized approach to understanding suicidality and physiological through a longitudinal study of 40 transfeminine youth (ages 12-17) during the first three months of gender-affirming hormone treatment.
Research reported in this publication was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant Number KL2TR001424. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Research reported in this publication was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant Number KL2TR001424. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Written by Roger Anderson
