PHYSIOLOGY NEWS
SPRING 2025
DR. RK RAO AWARDED
DR. ELDON D. AND RUTH CONNELL PROFESSORSHIP DEPARTMENT OF PHYSIOLOGY FACULTY Zhongjie Sun, MD, PhD, FAHA Professor and Chair Thomas A. Gerwin Chair of Excellence in Physiology Ioannis Dragatsis, PhD Professor Zheng Fan, PhD Professor Jonathan H. Jaggar, PhD Maury W. Bronstein Professor Salvatore Mancarella, PhD Associate Professor Helena Parfenova, PhD Professor Kaushik Parthasarathi, PhD Associate Professor Gadiparthi N. Rao, PhD George and Elizabeth Malloy Professor Radhakrishna Rao, PhD Eldon D and Ruth Connell Professor Donald B. Thomason, PhD Professor Dean, College of Graduate Health Sciences Gabor J. Tigyi, MD, PhD Van Vleet Professor Junwang Xu, PhD Associate Professor Djamel Lebeche, PhD Professor Ki-Suk Kim, PhD Assistant Professor Rahima Zennadi, PhD Associate Professor Rajeshwary Ghosh, PhD Assistant Professor
At the Physiology Department’s annual Year End Review event this past December, Dr. Radhakrishna Rao was presented with a special honor. He was bestowed with the Dr. Eldon D. and Ruth Connell Professorship. This endowment seat had been previously held by Dr. Adebowale Adebiyi, who was the first person to hold that honor under Dr. Sun’s tenure as the department’s chair. Dr. RK Rao serves as the ViceChair of the department of Physiology, a position he has held since 2017. His renowned research focuses on the structure and regulation of epithelial tight junctions and adherens junctions. For more information about Dr. RK Rao’s research, contact him at rrao2@uthsc.edu.
DR. GABOR TIGYI AWARDED
BY THE TRANSYLVANIA MUSEUM ASSOCIATION, DELIVERS KEYNOTE Dr. Gabor Tigyi, the Harriet Van Vleet Professor in Physiology, presented the keynote lecture on the occasion of the “Day of Science” celebration in the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca, in Romania. Dr. Tigyi was also this year’s recipient of the Ct. Imre Mikó plaque, which was also awarded by the Transylvania Museum Association. The Museum Association, which has been the hub of intellectual pursuits by scientists and artists from the Transylvanian region, is celebrating its 165th anniversary this year. Dr. Tigyi, who was born in Hungary, is known globally for his research pertaining to the pharmacology of phospholipid growth factors.
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For more information about Dr. Tigyi’s research, contact him at gtigyi@uthsc.edu. For more information on The Transylvania Museum Society, visit www.eme.ro/servlet/eme/ template/english%2CPIndexScreenEN.vm/action/ChangeLocaleAction/currentlocale/ en/eventsubmit_dochangelocale/null