I am overjoyed that we could gather at the center’s offices on May 10th for the 2022 COAH Spring Awards Luncheon. The center has been around for almost 25 years, and this luncheon has been a favorite part of happenings since 2014.
The purpose of this luncheon is really to bring people together and celebrate our successes and our talented, growing team. At the event, we highlight new hires, appointments and promotions. We recognize accomplishments individuals have earned through their dedication and hard work. And we acknowledge the prolific new financial awards/funding our team of researchers have gained to further advance scientific data around healthy aging.
Since this was the first COHA Spring Awards Luncheon since the pandemic began, it encompassed such laurels over the past two years. Here are a few examples of our reasons to come together and celebrate:
New Hires:
Tom Cidav – New hire: Biostatistician (April 2020)
Tony Teano – New hire: Sr. Administrative Coordinator (April 2020)
Talan Zhang – New hire: Sr. Biostatistician (August 2020)
Tim Sanders – New hire: Software Engineer (September 2020)
Appointments:
Cynthia Boyd – Director, Division of Geriatrics (August 2021)
Jennifer Schrack – Named new Co-PI of NHATS (2021)
Promotions:
Ravi Varadhan – Promoted to full professor (2021)
Marcela Blinka – Promoted to Research Associate (2021)
Tony Teano – Promoted to Communications Specialist (July 2021)
Awards:
Marcela Blinka – MFL Staff Award of Excellence for Leadership (2019)
Tony Teano – SOM Pride Month Achievers Award (June 2021)
Tony Teano – MFL Award for Creativity & Innovation (June 2021)
Tony Teano – Wrote/won a Diversity Innovation Grant from APL/DLC for “Geriatricians Engaged and Ready for LGBTQ+ Aging, Health & Wellness” with Drs. Matt McNabney (Mosaic Initiative in Geriatrics) & Panagis Galiatsatos (Medicine for the Greater Good & Office of Diversity Inclusion & Health Equity) as co-leaders of this initiative, and with the support of Dr. Cynthia Boyd, Director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine & Gerontology (January, 2022)
Emma Nichols – Louis I. and Thomas D. Dublin Award (2022)
Elizabeth Linton – Delta Omega Scholarship – Applied Research Award (2022)
Erica Twardzik – ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award – (2022) Of the more than 800 dissertations submitted each year, only ten are selected. The ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards recognize highly accomplished graduate students who have produced exceptional dissertations of outstanding scholarly quality in any field of study.
While the lists of new grant-funded research and prominent peer-reviewed articles are too long to enumerate here, suffice it to say that the center’s industrious team successfully gained the resources to advance research benefiting older adults and their caregivers nationally and globally with many interesting and innovative approaches and topics that promise to yield valuable findings.
As COAH’s director for more than a decade, I am proud of our team as individuals and as collaborators—both internally to Johns Hopkins as well as with prominent external researchers in the field of applied geriatrics. I congratulate you on your successes, and wish you many more!
By Dr. David L. Roth