April 30, 2009
UW names 2009 Magnuson Scholars
The UW has named six people from the health sciences schools as Magnuson Scholars, one of the highest awards given by the University. The awardees this year are Rafael Alfonso, from the School of Pharmacy; Amanda Fretts, from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine; Jeremy Horst, from the School of Dentistry; Gillian Marshall from the School of Social Work; Lauren Thorngate, from the School of Nursing; and Mirna Nabil Toukatly, from the School of Medicine.
The University names six Magnuson Scholars each year, one from each of the six UW health sciences schools. The Magnuson Scholars are selected on the basis of their academic performance and their potential contributions to research in the health sciences.
The late Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, in whose name the program was established, was committed to improving the nation’s health through biomedical research and was instrumental in establishing the National Institutes of Health, Medicare and Medicaid during his long career in the senate.
Below are biographies of this year’s Magnuson Scholars:
Rafael Alfonso, M.D. (Pharmacy): Rafael is currently in his second year of his doctoral program in the Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program in the UW School of Pharmacy. He graduated from de School of Medicine of the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia, his native country, and holds a master of science in pharmaco-epidemiology from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain. Rafael developed many projects related to clinical, patient-reported outcomes, and pharmaco-epidemiology while working for pharmaceutical companies, focusing in diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, asthma, and glaucoma. During the last year, his research was focused in the development of pharmaco-economic models of a new diabetes treatment and is currently working on a new model for the surgical treatment of obesity. Rafael is an active member of the International Society for Pharmaco-economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), being the founder president of the ISPOR Chapter of Colombia, and as a member of the Advisory Board for the Latin American Consortium. Additionally, he is the founder, board member, and scientific director of RANDOM Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Colombia dedicated to promote and improve clinical and outcomes research in Latin America. When Rafael is not studying or working on his research, he devotes most of his time to his wife and son. He also enjoys soccer, although his favorite teammate, his brother Rodrigo, is still in Colombia. Cooking and reading about art complete his hobbies.
Amanda Fretts (Public Health): Amanda is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology. She is primarily interested in American Indian health, physical activity, nutrition, and diabetes research. Currently, she is exploring the effect of a healthy lifestyle on incident diabetes in young American Indians (age 18-49 years) from 13 American Indian communities in North Dakota, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Amanda received her bachelor of arts degree in anthropology from Amherst College and then worked in Boston for two years before moving to Seattle to pursue her master’s in public health and doctorate in epidemiology. She is originally from the east coast (family lives in Connecticut and New Brunswick, Canada) and has been in Seattle for almost four years. She has a twin sister and enjoys running, tennis, and hiking. Amanda’s long-term goal is to pursue an academic career in epidemiology and American Indian health research.
Jeremy Horst, DDS, PhD (Dentistry): Jeremy came to the UW’s Department of Oral Biology in 2004 as the first concurrent doctor of dental surgery (DDS) and doctoral student to pursue studies in microbiology in computational modeling of protein structure, function, and interactions to clinical problems in dentistry. Born in San Francisco, Jeremy graduated from the University of California San Diego with bachelor degrees in psychology and pharmacological chemistry and a master’s in chemistry. More recently, he completed his DDS at the UW. While directing the UC San Diego Student Run Free Dental Clinic Project, Jeremy became interested in accelerating the advancement of translational solutions to oral health disparities, particularly those resulting in tooth loss due to periodontitis and dental caries. His approach in the research group was to use structural and genetic analysis to characterize the mechanisms underlying protein-hydroxyapatite interactions to increase the understanding of etiology for these diseases and thereby inform rational design of therapeutic approaches. He also won first place in both the American and International Association of Dental Research Hatton Awards’ competition during his first year at the UW. Jeremy contributes his successes to guidance from his wife Dr. Orapin Veerayutthwilai Horst who was a Magnuson Scholar award recipient in 2005-2006.
Gillian Marshall (Social Work): Gillian was born and raised in Canada and immigrated to the United States almost 10 years ago. She has one older brother and a younger sister. A child of immigrant parents, Gillian is the first in both her immediate and extended family to pursue a master’s and a doctoral degree. She first came to the UW in 2000 as a student pursuing a master’s degree in social work. Upon completion of that degree, she worked for a number of agencies in the local area, including the City of Seattle’s Aging and Disability Services, Children’s Hospital’s Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, and Group Health Cooperative’s Home Health and Hospice unit. Her decision to return to graduate school and pursue a doctoral in social welfare with a focus in mental health research was mainly because of the dearth of descriptive and exploratory studies regarding older Black Americans and the many disparities they face in mental health treatment and services. Her long-term goal is to be a skilled educator and an expert researcher in areas intersecting age, race, and socioeconomic differences and mental health in late life. Consistent with this goal, Gillian’s proposed study plans to investigate how racial and ethnic differences in age, gender, stress and coping, place of birth, and socioeconomic status affect mental health outcomes within racial and ethnic groups. Further, she plans to work with other scholars to develop interventions to ameliorate mental health status among and within racial/ethnic groups of older adults. Gillian attributes her success to her family, all the supportive members of her community, and the faculty and staff in the School of Social Work.
Lauren Thorngate (Nursing): Lauren is a neonatal nurse and doctoral candidate in the School of Nursing. Raised in Monterey, Calif., she did her undergraduate work at the University of San Francisco and earned her master’s degree in community health and nursing administration at University of California San Francisco before relocating to Washington in 1990. Throughout her practice as a clinical nurse specialist at the UW Medical Center and Seattle Children’s, Lauren has worked to support vulnerable premature and critically ill newborns and the nurses who care for them. The management of pain in the population of premature infants has long been among the aspects of care she seeks to improve upon. In particular, Lauren is interested in the effect of opioids used to provide analgesia and sedation during neonatal intensive care on the developing brain. As a student, she is deepening her knowledge of neuroplasticity and physiologic changes to neural structures as a result of repetitive pain. As an emergent nurse scientist, Lauren proposes a study aimed at describing brain function and the effect of opioids, employing amplitude integrated EEG as a direct, non-invasive measure of brain function in premature infants at the earliest gestation. The description of brain function during opioid administration will become the foundation of further work exploring effects of nursing care and interventions to reduce pain and manage the stress of intensive care and ultimately improve the neurologic outcomes of infants born early. Lauren and her partner live in North Seattle and enjoy the antics of two dogs, a cat, and a teenage daughter.
Mirna Nabil Toukatly (Medicine): Mirna was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She graduated from Notre Dame des Apotres French School in 2002. The years spent in Lebanon were very memorable for Mirna absorbing the Lebanese culture, language, food, traditions, and enjoying the beautiful Mediterranean beaches. She enjoyed playing basketball with a club team for six years and for the international Lebanese team in the summer of 2002. While attending Saint Joseph University School of Medicine, she and her family decided to immigrate to the United States upon being granted permanent resident cards in 2003. They immigrated to Eugene, Oregon, where other family members lived. Mirna has two sisters and a younger brother. In Eugene, Mirna attended Lane Community College for one year and then transferred to the University of Oregon, where she studied biochemistry and Spanish. She did undergraduate research in arsenical supramolecular chemistry, worked as a TA in biochemistry and molecular genetics, and then as a research assistant and lab technician for Mitosciences, a biotechnology company. Mirna also did volunteer work in the Eugene community at Medicine Clinic, Sacred Heart Hospital, and the Red Cross. After graduating summa cum laude with a biochemistry degree, Mirna applied and was accepted at the UW School of Medicine and moved to Seattle in the summer of 2008. She is enjoying medical school and trying to discover, though the many opportunities of learning and the programs that the UW School of Medicine offers, a specific career path. During this past summer, Mirna participated in a diabetes research project working with both basic researchers and physicians.
