RESEARCH NEWS be disrupted over the subsequent two years. It’s still a bit incredible to me now, even having lived through it. I am beyond pleased that we are in a better place today with the scientific advances that have dramatically improved our ability to safeguard people from COVID’s worst effects through vaccination, and to treat people who suffer serious illness when they become infected. These gains come through the hard work of so many scientists and physicians around the world who put COVID in their sights, and we owe them, we owe many of you, our deepest gratitude. I’m also glad for all that we’ve accomplished individually and collectively during these challenging times. In the Pathology Ph.D. program, our students continue to have scientific success during their years of training with 26 co-authored papers published in the last year, eight of which have our students as first authors. We also continue our fruitful pursuit of fellowship funding with Kimberly Burgos-Villar as our newest F31 recipient in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Small, bringing us to six trainees currently holding NIH F31 or F30 individual National Research Service Awards. Emma House, mentored by Dr. Matthew McGraw, was accepted onto the Lung Biology T32 Training Grant, joining three of her fellow students in being funded
FOCUS ON FACULTY One of the discovery's key players, Dr. Barbara Weber, joined the faculty at U. Penn. while Schiffhauer was a resident there. After enthusiastically pitching an idea for a project, she began working in Weber’s research lab. Schiffhauer was later granted a fellowship to stay and do research and surgical pathology after residency. She was still working in the Philadelphia area when the phone rang one day. It was URMC’s pathology chair, Steve Spitalnik, M.D., who had worked at U. Penn. during her residency. He knew about her Rochester roots and asked if she was interested in looking at a job in Rochester. The rest is history. Schiffhauer’s early years on the faculty were researchheavy and Janet Sparks, Ph.D., became a valuable mentor in this area. She became very interested in virtual microscopy and over time was instrumental in prompting the shift from using microscopic slides to digitized whole slides in medical school teaching. It was also around this time that she met her husband, David, and they had two daughters, Emily and Sarah. Schiffhauer completed a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship in 2008, an experience that she says solidified her passion for teaching. That year she became the director of pathology medical education for the School of Medicine and
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through institutional training grants in musculoskeletal or lung biology. Another sign that we keep moving forward is the five students who have earned their Ph.D. degrees so far this year with three additional defenses slated for the coming months. We have bid farewell to Drs. Andrea Amitrano, John Bachman, Olivia Marola, Ronghao Wang and Chia-Hao Wu. Four of these young people are moving into prestigious post-doctoral fellowships at universities in the U.S. Dr. Wang garnered a faculty position at Southwest Medical University School of Basic Sciences in China. Meanwhile, our student recruitment activities were well-received by our applicants (based on results of exit polling from recruitment weekend). We have made offers of admission to 14 prospective students and have already had two accept our offer! As a scientist and educator, I strive for the mindset exemplified by a favorite quote of mine, attributed to Walt Disney: “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt summarizes not only his own ethos, but that of every researcher who has ever wondered how something worked and then blazed a trail to figure out the answer.
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Dentistry. She has overseen several surgical pathology rotations for our residency program and directed the effort to move to subspecialty-based resident rotations. She was named associate director in 2014 and five years later became Residency Program Director. This, she says, is her dream job. Having an impact on incoming trainees, seeing them grow and find their passion gives her great satisfaction. This means much of her scholarly work is related to education—creating curriculum and experimenting with new learning methods. Whether it’s the education coordinators or her colleagues on the busy breast service, she finds a special camaraderie at URMC. “Our team has so many great people to work with, which makes coming to work every day enjoyable even on the hard days. I’m grateful for the community and the culturce we have here in the department,” she said. Outside of work, Schiffhauer plays classical guitar—a skill she picked up as an adult. Her daughters are pursuing the arts; Sarah is studying ballet at the University of Utah and Emily enjoys performing musical theater in the Webster school district. Her husband works senior programmer/ analyst for Seneca Foods Corporation. “Family and work-life balance are really important to me, along with having a great team to work with,” said Schiffhauer.
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