We received heartfelt and descriptive nominations for the March 2024 researcher staff members of the month! To nominate someone for recognition, please email Melanie Kirk.
Kristy Long, Scientific Program Leader II
"It happens often that we work with colleagues who are organized, dedicated to our mission, and have a delightful personality to work with. They are our hidden treasures that never falter our expectations and make our work so productive. Kristy is one of them.
Kristy has been with us for more than 20 years and has covered so many roles from operator, to lab manager, and to the current position that has more attributes that we can say. She welcomes our new employee with safety training. She helped them navigate through our repository of samples to perform their assays with the right samples. She organizes the work for our clinical trials coordinating three groups that have a huge workload of clinical samples to test, and I am referring to Drs. Tomaras’s, Montefiori’s, and my labs for many networks and extra-mural collaborations. She can always help when it’s time to send and receive samples among us and with our collaboration fulfilling all of the complicated guidelines for biological material. If time comes to keep track of your biosafety or IRB, she is again there to make sure that all the requirements are fulfilled.
She performs all of these tasks while always been supporting, positive for what we are trying to accomplish. Over the years, she has become a corner stone in our groups and I think time has come to recognize her as an example for what we all need to be."
- Guido Ferrari, MD, Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences
Brandon Hall, Scientific Program Leader I, and
Darci Miller, Grants & Contracts Administrator
"Darci Miller and Brandon Hall with the grants team have been invaluable resources for me as I just submitted my first R01! Between the two of them, I'm not sure it would have ever happened without their assistance and guidance. They also provide assistance with my other grant management work, are always responsive, and if they don't have an answer, they quickly find one.
They are truly wonderful to work with and I'm honored to have them as colleagues!"
- Jennifer Plichta, MD, MS, Associate Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology