UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Tuesday April 6, 2021 Volume 67 Number 33 www.upenn.edu/almanac Graduate School Rankings 2022 Penn Medicine Researcher: $1 Million Grant to Expand COVID-19 Each year, U.S. News & World Report ranks Treatment Discovery Platform graduate and professional schools in business, David C. Fajgenbaum, an assistant professor treatments for well-designed clinical trials and to medicine, education, law, engineering and nursing. of translational medicine & human genetics and inform patient care. With funding from PICI, sev- Five of Penn’s Schools are in the top 10 list. Those the director of the Center for Cytokine Storm eral new tools are in development or have already in the top 30 are below; for more, see U.S. News’ Treatment & Laboratory at the Perelman School been built, including an open-access dashboard website: www.usnews.com. of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, that integrates data between studies and presents 2021 2022 was awarded $1 million by the Parker Insti- vital data points for prioritizing promising treat- Wharton School 1 2 Finance 1 1 tute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) to ex- ments, such as the number of randomized control Real Estate - 1 pand the scope of the trials that have been completed, the number that Marketing 2 2 COVID-19 Registry are open, the number that achieved their primary Executive MBA 3 2 of Off-label & New endpoint, and others. Accounting 3 3 Agents (CORONA) “All of the really relevant and important data Business Analytics 5 3 project and build out is listed right next to each COVID-19 drug and Management 7 4 his team to accelerate kept up to date,” Dr. Fajgenbaum said. “Given International 5 6 treatment identifica- the hundreds of drugs that have been tested in Production/Operations 6 6 Entrepreneurship 6 6 tion for COVID-19. the last year, the tens of thousands of published Information Systems 11 10 “For the last year, studies about them, and the global importance Graduate School of Education 2 1 over 100 volunteers of finding truly effective treatments, we had to Higher Education Administration 6 5 and members of my build a central tool like this. We can’t afford to Education Policy 7 5 lab have worked on let a promising treatment fall through the cracks.” School of Nursing 3 3 nights and weekends Fortunately, CORONA has been accessed Administration 5 1 to extract and central- by over 20,000 users and has served as a critical Adult/Gerontology, Primary Care 1 2 Adult/Gerontology, Acute Care 2 2 ize data for CORONA David Fajgenbaum dataset for the Food and Drug Administration which has been used (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Pediatric, Primary Care 1 3 to identify and advance the most promising treat- In fact, Dr. Fajgenbaum was recently selected to Psychiatric Mental Health/Lifespan 3 3 Nurse Practitioner-Family 6 5 ments for COVID-19,” Dr. Fajgenbaum said. serve on the NIH’s ACTIV-6 team to select the Nurse Midwifery 7 7 “With this grant from PICI, we can build out our most promising COVID-19 treatments for a large PSOM-Research 3 9 team to integrate and analyze data with the effort randomized controlled trial. He is also leading a PSOM-Primary Care 14 24 and urgency that this global pandemic warrants.” similar effort for the CURE Drug Repurposing Pediatrics 1 1 CORONA is the world’s largest database of Collaboratory, a public-private partnership be- Psychiatry 6 2 COVID-19 treatments, covering more than 400 tween the FDA, NIH, and Critical Path Institute. Ob/Gyn 4 3 treatments that have been reported to be admin- During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fajgen- Internal Medicine 4 4 istered to more than 340,000 patients, helping baum also contributed to establishing a unifying Anesthesiology 5 5 researchers to identify and prioritize promising Radiology 4 5 (continued on page 2) Surgery 6 6 Clinical Psychology 8 8 Law School 7 6 School of Nursing 2021 Teaching Awards Business/Corporate Law 6 3 The honorees listed below will be recognized to obtain PhDs and develop their own programs Contracts/Commercial Law 6 5 during a virtual, end-of-the-year event on Thurs- of research. Students praise Dr. Spatz for her Criminal Law 6 7 unwavering support and advocacy, ensuring they Intellectual Property Law 8 13 day, May 27, 2021 from 3-5 p.m. International Law 14 14 have adequate resources for their academic pur- Tax Law 15 21 Dean’s Award for Undergraduate suits. An internationally known breastfeeding, Health Care Law 22 20 Scholarly Mentorship lactation, and human milk expert, Dr. Spatz is a Clinical Training 27 27 Diane L. Spatz is a professor of perinatal nurse researcher at CHOP’s Breastfeeding and School of Arts & Sciences — — nursing and the Helen M. Shearer Term Pro- Lactation Program and a clinical coordinator at English - 3 fessor of Nutrition CHOP’s Mothers’ Milk Bank. These positions Psychology - 8 have afforded Dr. Spatz’s mentees incredible Economics - 9 in the department History - 11 of family and com- opportunities, as she includes students in her research process and connects students of all Mathematics - 16 munity health. Dr. Chemistry - 19 Spatz’s impact on class years. Dr. Spatz’s passion and ability to Political Science - 19 students’ scholarly build a constructive and mutually rewarding Engineering & Applied Science 18 18 growth is quite sig- relationship with her students, both inside and Biomedical/Bioengineering 8 8 nificant. Her mentees outside of the classroom, speaks to her embodi- (—) Indicates not ranked. develop their scien- ment of an ideal undergraduate scholarly mentor. tific inquiry skills, INSIDE including evaluat- Dean’s Award for MS/MSN/DNP 2 A Message to the Penn Community Concerning ing literature, craft- Scholarly Mentorship COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution; Tree Giveaway 3 Sachs Grant Opportunity; PPSA Nominations; ing clinical research Mamie K. Guidera is an advanced senior Factcheck.org Awarded Funding questions, data col- lecturer in the Nurse-Midwifery program in the 4 Deaths; New Annenberg Center for Collaborative lection, and research Diane Spatz department of family and community health. Communication Ms. Guidera is well-known for her inspiring and 5 Honors & Other Things dissemination. Dr. 6 75th Anniversary of the ENIAC Spatz’s encouragement and mentorship inspire creative nature. Nationally recognized for excel- 10 Spring at Morris Arboretum; Virtual Magic Academy some of her undergraduate students to join the lence in teaching by the American College of 11 Update; CrimeStats Hillman Scholars program, which has led them 12 Research & Innovation (continued on page 8) Supplement: Campus Iconography Group Report ALMANAC April 6, 2021 www.upenn.edu/almanac 1 From the Associate Provost of Finance and Planning, Chief Wellness Penn Medicine Researcher: $1 Officer, Vice President for Human Resources, Chief Information Million Grant to Expand COVID-19 Treatment Discovery Platform Officer, and Vice Provost for Faculty (continued from page 1) definition for cytokine storm, the most deadly manifestation of COVID-19, and uncovered new A Message to the Penn Community mechanisms that can be involved in combating Concerning COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution cytokine storm. March 31, 2021 Additional members of the lab and volunteers on the effort include Sheila Pierson, Johnson It has been one year since the pandemic began changing the ways we live, work, and Khor, Alexis Phillips, Amber Cohen, Ania Kor- learn. Though it has been a time of unprecedented challenges, the Penn community has shown sunska, and Matt Chadsey. remarkable resilience. Critical tools such as PennOpen Pass and Penn Cares have engaged This process of drug discovery is very per- all of us in our collective responsibility to protect ourselves and each other, and to reduce the sonal to Dr. Fajgenbaum and his team. Using spread of COVID-19. The next critical step in our fight against the virus is vaccine distribution. a similar approach to CORONA, they have We recognize the many questions about what role Penn will play in distributing vaccines also discovered multiple promising treatment to the Penn community. Penn’s Vaccine Response Team (VRT) is currently working on approaches for Castleman disease, which Dr. implementing a vaccine distribution plan to provide vaccine access to faculty, staff, postdocs, Fajgenbaum battles as a patient, and even used and students. one of those treatments to induce an extended The University has received authorization from the Philadelphia Department of Public remission for Dr. Fajgenbaum. Health (PDPH) to administer the vaccine on campus to eligible faculty, staff, postdocs, and The CORONA project currently has seed students. funding for one year and is actively seeking The site will open in April at Gimbel Gymnasium in the Pottruck Health and Fitness additional financial support. While they hope Center. We value your feedback about our vaccine efforts and ask that you take a few minutes that they can contribute to accelerating the end to complete the Penn Wellness COVID-19 Vaccine Interest survey. Your answers will let us of this pandemic within that timeframe, they know that you are interested in receiving the vaccine on campus should you be eligible when also hope to turn this tool for COVID-19 into it becomes available. a platform for drug discovery and repurposing Vaccines are not mandatory. However, when they are available, the University will facilitate beyond COVID-19. access to vaccines according to the vaccine phases established by the PDPH. The vaccines will be administered to faculty, staff, and postdocs who are Philadelphia residents, as this is the cur- rent PDPH guideline. Students are exempt from meeting the permanent residency requirement. Creating Canopy Tree Giveaway We will communicate details of our plan and process once those plans have been finalized.