With the support of both the Whiting School of Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, we in the Institute for Computational Medicine have been fortunate to have recruited an extraordinary cadre of young faculty. The accomplishments of two of these faculty, Drs. Feilim Mac Gabhann and Sridevi V. Sarma, have now been recognized by the University through promotion to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure.

Dr. Mac Gabhann received his PhD in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2006, working with Aleksander Popel on the systems biology of angiogenesis. He spent several years in postdoctoral work with Professor Shayn Pierce-Cottler at the University of Virginia before returning to Johns Hopkins as a faculty member. “He is a pioneer in the field of systems pharmacology,” according to Dr. Raimond Winslow, Director of the ICM. Dr. Mac Gabhann uses methods of multi-scale modeling to better understand factors regulating efficacy of drug treatment at the organ, tissue, cellular, sub-cellular, and molecular scales. His specific research interests include personalized modeling of cancer and HIV therapies. His work has been internationally recognized, as he has received the NIH Pathway to Independence Award, the American Physiological Society Arthur C. Guyton Award for Excellence in Integrative Physiology, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship. He has also received research funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and the American Heart Association. He has been prolific in publication, with more than 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts. “The entire ICM community treasures him as a colleague” added Dr. Winslow.

In addition to his research accomplishments, Dr. Mac Gabhann has been recognized for his dedication to quality in teaching and mentoring with the Whiting School of Engineering William H. Huggins Excellence in Teaching Award. His commitment to excellence in teaching extends beyond science and engineering, to research ethics as well. Earlier this year, Dr. Mac Gabhann received funding from the Office of the Provost’s new Exploration of Practical Ethics program to develop an undergraduate engineering course that will give JHU students a deep and practical grounding in the application of ethics in real-world problems.

Dr. Sarma conducts world-class research at the cutting-edge of neuroscience and brain disease. She brings a unique perspective to this work that builds on her training as a control theorist in the laboratory of her PhD mentor Munther Dahleh at MIT and her postdoctoral work in neuroscience with Emery Brown at Harvard. Her research interests are diverse and include applications of control theory to understanding Parkinson’s disease, methods for seizure detection and localization in epilepsy, and improved methods for deep-brain stimulation. The results of her work are already being translated to the clinic – she developed a novel computational tool, EZTrack, which quickly and with 95% accuracy identifies the seizure focus, or epileptogenic zone, from hundreds of invasive EEG recordings. EZTrack not only assists clinicians in increasing success of surgery and enabling more targeted treatment, it also reduces the prolonged hospitalization required during pre-surgical evaluation and neurologic morbidity.

Dr. Sarma’s work has been acknowledged with numerous prestigious awards including the Burroughs-Welcome Foundation Careers at the Scientific Interface Award, the Krishna Kumar Young Investigator Award of the North American Neuromodulation Society, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Additionally, her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Coulter Foundation, and the TEDCO Maryland Innovative Initiative.

Dr. Sarma is also devoted to mentoring of her students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. In 2015, the student body expressed their appreciation of her enthusiasm and accessibility with the Whiting School of Engineering Robert B. Pond Excellence in Teaching Award. “We couldn’t be more pleased to have her as a valued colleague in ICM,” said ICM Director Winslow, “and we look forward to what I know will be many future accomplishments.”