Published April 1, 2015 This content is archived.
Twenty-seven dedicated medical trainees and one faculty member have joined the University at Buffalo’s chapter of the national honor medical society Alpha Omega Alpha.
The 2015 honorees include 24 medical students and three residents.
Chapter members elect the new inductees to the professional medical organization for life. They give this honor to medical trainees and educators who demonstrate outstanding commitment to scholarship, leadership, professionalism and service.
The top 25 percent of a medical school class may be nominated. Including last year’s inductees, less than one-fifth of UB’s Class of 2015 — 26 out of 140 students — received this honor.
Chapter leaders inducted the following during a March 19 ceremony:
This year’s faculty inductee was noted medical educator Alan J. Lesse, MD, interim senior associate dean for medical curriculum.
The infectious disease expert is an associate professor in three departments: medicine; pharmacology and toxicology; and microbiology and immunology. He also is vice chair for education in UB’s Department of Medicine as well as chief of infectious disease for the VA Western New York Healthcare System.
In 2014, Lesse received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Also recognized were two UB medical trainees who won national AOA research awards in 2014.
Sahar Naseer, now a fourth-year student in UB’s medical education program, received an AOA Student Research Fellowship Award.
The $6,000 award supports her project, “Next-Generation Sequencing in Pemphigas Vulgaris.” Her faculty mentor is Animesh A. Sinha, MD, PhD, Rita M. and Ralph T. Behling Professor and chair of dermatology.
Neha Gupta, MD, received a $2,000 AOA Postgraduate Research Award.
This award supported her quality improvement project, “Implementation of a Palliative Care Screening Tool in a Genitourinary Oncology Clinic and Assessment of its Impact on Volume of Palliative Care Referrals, Improvement in Patients’ Symptom Burden and Satisfaction.” Gupta worked with Roberto Pili, MD, professor of medicine.
She completed the UB fellowship program in hospice and palliative medicine.
Michael E. Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences and dean, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, gave opening remarks at the event.
The distinguished lecturer was John A. Sellick Jr., DO, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. He presented “Ebola Virus: Out of Africa and Back to the Future.”
Third-year medical student and AOA initiate William F. Stendardi gave a talk on the society’s origins.
Officers of UB’s Epsilon New York AOA chapter led the ceremony. They are:
The University at Buffalo is internationally recognized as a leader in education, research and patient care, with a long history of excellence in medical education that began in 1846. We have achieved this recognition by blending academic excellence, exceptional bedside clinical teaching and thoughtful innovation designed to meet the changing needs of future clinical practitioners.
Our Residency and Fellowship Programs offer physicians-in-training outstanding opportunities to learn from clinicians who are among the best in their fields.