Mark Marunick, D.D.S., M.S., presented on the topic of “Rehabilitation of Patients Following Surgery Involving the Floor of Mouth, Tongue and Mandible; Surgical and Prosthodontic Considerations,” on Oct. 29, 2007, at the annual Scientific Meeting of the American Academy of Maxillofacial Prosthetics in Scottsdale, Ariz. At that meeting Dr. Marunick was also formally presented the Judson C. Hickey Award for scientific writing.

Joshua E. Adler, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Neurology and of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been appointed section chief of the Comprehensive Pain Service at the John Dingell Veterans Administration Hospital in Detroit.

Dr. Adler is currently funded for research in mechanisms of pain through the Veterans Administration with two major research grants totaling $936,000 over four years.

Christian Bimenyuy, MD, third-year internal medicine resident, was awarded the 2007 FSR Award for Excellence in Sarcoidosis Research for his abstract, Treatment of Sarcoidosis-Associated Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension With Bosentan. The $1500 award was presented in collaboration with the American College of Chest Physicians.

Headquartered in Chicago, the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research (FSR) is the United States' leading organization dedicated to improving care for patients and to finding a cure for this disease. Since 2000, FSR has worked to provide resources to thousands of patients, their families and their physicians as well as funded several domestic and international research efforts.

The Annual Senior Lecture Series of the Academy of Scholars will be Thursday, Oct. 25, at 3 p.m., in Blue Auditorium, Scott Hall. David J.P. Barker, M.D., Ph.D., professor of clinical epidemiology at United Kingdom’s University of Southampton and a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University, will speak on “Chronic Disease Begins in the Womb.”

Fifteen years ago, Dr. Barker showed for the first time that people who had low birth weight are at greater risk of developing coronary heart disease. He subsequently showed that they are also at greater risk of stroke, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. This led to the idea that these disorders originate through malnutrition in the womb and during infancy. In 1992, the British Medical Journal named this the “Barker Hypothesis,” which is now widely accepted. He recently joined the faculty at the Heart Research Center, OHSU, to study how nutrition and growth before birth and during early childhood alter the development of the heart.

For more information, please call (313) 577-6011. This event is co-sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Perinatology Research Branch.

Dr. Richard Okita, program director in the Division of Pharmacology, Physiology and Biological Chemistry of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, is the keynote speaker. His presentation will begin at 11:15 a.m., in the Commons Auditorium.