Rinad Beidas, PhD, director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit, has been named an associate editor of the journal Implementation Science. Focusing on the implementation of evidence gleaned from research into healthcare practice, Implementation Science is the flagship journal for the field with more than 2 million direct downloads each year. Beidas, who is also founding director of the Penn Implementation Science Center at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, associate director of the Penn Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, and an associate professor of Psychiatry, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Medicine, has published more than 200 papers in the implementation science field. Her work focuses on leveraging insights from behavioral economics and implementation science to make it easier for clinicians, leaders, and organizations to use best practices to improve the quality and equity of care and enhance health outcomes.
Yogesh Goyal, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Genetics and Bioengineering, has been selected as a 2021 STAT Wunderkind, which honors the "next generation of scientific superstars." Goyal's research is centered around developing novel mathematical and experimental frameworks to study how a rare subpopulation of cancer cells are able to survive drug therapy and develop resistance, resulting in relapse in patients. In particular, his work provides a view of different paths that single cancer cells take when becoming resistant, at unprecedented resolution and scale. This research aims to help devise novel therapeutic strategies to combat the challenge of drug resistance in cancer.
Sarah Tishkoff, PhD, the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology, and an international group of collaborators has been awarded $2.7 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's Donor Advised Fund. Hers is one of 16 new projects funded by the Initiative that will provide insights into how genetic ancestry influences health and disease at the level of our cells. Tishkoff will lead the research team to study gene expression and epigenetic variation in African immigrant populations in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Belgium, as well as populations from Morocco and Tanzania. This project provides a unique opportunity to distinguish how genetics and environment impact gene expression and immune response in each of these populations, increasing the understanding of variable risk for multiple diseases.
