Faculty Awards (continued)
Cincinnati Children's celebrated outstanding faculty members on February 18. Congratulations to our honorees and to all who were nominated by their peers.
Educational Achievement Award
Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd
Division of Emergency Medicine
Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd, is a consummate educator with a lifelong dedication to teaching. He is consistently regarded as one of the finest teachers among our faculty, and he has received local and national recognition for his educational achievements and contributions to the field of pediatric emergency medicine.
With goals to become the best medical educator and train the best pediatricians in the world, Sobolewski demonstrates his commitment every day—whether at the bedside, during local or national lectures and conferences, as a residency associate program director, or as a famous internationally followed blogger. His humor, his wit, his ability to make complex issues digestible, and his hilarious references to popular culture are legendary.
Sobolewski is esteemed as a passionate, dedicated, and innovative educator and clinician. He is loved by his colleagues, patients, and families. In the ED, he delivers optimal, evidence-based, patient-centered care by ensuring families understand plans and receive timely follow-up care and thorough counseling about return precautions. This holistic approach to clinical care requires an expansive knowledge base, a keen sense of the educational and social needs of families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and exceptional communication skills.
Educational Achievement Award
David Hildeman, PhD
Division of Immunobiology
David Hildeman, PhD, has been a constant, dedicated, and successful champion of the institutional educational mission. He is a fantastic mentor who sets a high bar for excellence in research and publication.
He has taught extensively in the Foundations of Immunology and Advanced Topics courses, served on multiple education-related institutional committees and graduate dissertation committees, and was inducted into the Graduate Fellows of the University of Cincinnati.
During Hildeman’s tenure as the director of the Immunology Graduate Program (ImmGP), the program flourished, gaining national respect and visibility as a destination for immunology training of the highest caliber. This is evidenced by increased enrollment and improved quality of recruited students, as assessed by publications, matriculation through the program, and career placement and advancement.
Hildeman has been a tireless advocate for improving the quality of education that students receive in the ImmGP. As a result of Hildeman’s design and continuous improvements in the ImmGP-specific curriculum, students in the ImmGP program have a stellar track record of publication and are in high demand as postdoctoral fellows at top institutions. Truly, his leadership has raised the profile of the educational efforts within our institution at both the national and international levels.
Entrepreneurial Achievement Award
Todd Ponsky, MD, FACS
Division of Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery
Todd Ponsky, MD, FACS, has an innovative mind and personal drive to democratize medical knowledge.
Long before the advent of COVID, Ponsky started a company that provides educational video conferences. Now, it has worldwide reach for educational seminars that provide outstanding engagement of physicians. In many ways, video conferences have replaced traditional meetings with much more effective methods of disseminating knowledge and connecting like-minded colleagues.
At Cincinnati Children's, he has promoted a culture of innovation across the department. He evolved the traditional surgical morbidity and mortality conference to include innovation, and it is now the MM&I conference. Residents and faculty who present at the conference are encouraged to present ideas for a process or device that would have prevented complications. Small groups are then created with the rapid prototyping process to bring the proposed solutions to life. Through this process, they have generated a number of patented inventions.
Ponsky has been enormously successful in his personal journey to drive innovation and, more importantly, has brought the culture of innovation to a higher level at Cincinnati Children's. We look forward to seeing his continued impact on our institution and on the delivery of medical education worldwide.
Mentoring Achievement Award
Lisa Herrmann, MD, MEd
Division of Hospital Medicine
Lisa Herrmann, MD, MEd, has a lifelong interest in education with a focus on mentorship. She has earned many academic achievements and teaching accolades.
Herrmann has a strong track record of educational innovation, collaboration, and research that she brings to her mentoring. Her enthusiasm, work ethic and teaching acumen have turned many of her educational experiences into mentoring opportunities, where she excels as a research, clinical, and career mentor.
Herrmann’s clinical passion focuses on inter-professional collaboration and creating high-functioning healthcare teams. She holds several related educational and clinical leadership positions and has been recognized for her expertise in inter-professional education and mentorship.
Recently, Herrmann was selected as Hospital Medicine’s director of Faculty Development and Education, providing additional mentorship opportunities to faculty with a scholarly focus in education. Being awarded significant educational leadership roles early in her career is a testament to her leadership skills, teaching abilities, and dedication to mentorship of trainees and colleagues.
In addition to her outstanding mentorship skills, Herrmann is also an outstanding educator. Her enthusiasm for teaching and her ability to create teachable moments at the bedside make her a shining star.
Mentoring Achievement Award
Nancy Ratner, PhD
Division of Experimental Hematology and Cancer Biology
Nancy Ratner, PhD, has proven to be an excellent researcher, a fantastic colleague, and more importantly, an outstanding mentor.
On a personal level, she is brilliant, engaging, enthusiastic, passionate, and a lot of fun. Equally important is the sense of selflessness that she brings to mentoring.
On a professional level, Ratner is accessible and collaborative with an acute intellect. She has an open-door policy and takes time to listen and advise, no matter how busy she is.
Ratner offers guidance, vision, and support for careers on a regular basis. She sets realistic but high standards. She recognizes potential and uses this knowledge to foster individual research focus and collaborations by bringing those with complementary skills together.
Ratner instituted weekly meetings with her mentees to discuss their grant aims, ideas and potential career development strategies. These meetings have provided much needed perspective to grant applications, helping bring the overall structure of the grant into context, resolving inconsistencies, applying the best possible grantsmanship, and identifying the most appropriate study section and NIH institute. As a result, her mentees at Cincinnati Children's have received more than 15 R01 or R01 levels grants so far.
Basic Science Research Achievement Award
Hitesh Deshmukh, MD, PhD
Division of Neonatology and Pulmonary Biology
Hitesh Deshmukh, MD, PhD, took a non-traditional path in his training that catalyzed his successful research career. After completing his medical degree, Deshmukh earned a PhD at the University of Cincinnati, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke University. He then returned to his clinical training, completing his residency and fellowship training in Pediatrics and Neonatology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Deshmukh's body of work has advanced and fundamentally altered our understanding of the contributing factors to fetal and neonatal immune development during critical developmental windows.
First, he identified a new paradigm for commensal gut microbiota in regulating systemic immune responses and risk for infection. He then ascertained the cellular and molecular mediators explicitly involved within the lung immune response, highlighting the disruptive role of perinatal antibiotics. He has extended this work to advance our understanding of critical periods in developing lung immune responses and how their disruption by preterm delivery has enduring effects over time.
His creativity has been noted by the community at large, as supported by several prestigious awards and acknowledgements.
Deshmukh is a quintessential physician-scientist and rising scientific star. There are few neonatologists in the US at any career stage who match his accomplishments.