We received heartfelt and descriptive nominations for the April 2024 staff members of the month! To nominate someone for recognition, please email Melanie Kirk.
Lauren Halligan, CMI, Medical Artwork Coordinator
"Lauren Halligan has helped me develop illustrations over the past 5 years for multiple grant and manuscript submissions that span a broad breadth of plastic surgery. Working with her has been a pleasure each and every time.
She is very timely and always produces excellent results. Even more impressive is her ability to synthesize and clearly depict clinical material in a graphical format that is easy to present to a broad audience."
- Ronnie Shammas, MD, Plastic Surgery Resident
"Lauren is not only an incredibly talented medical illustrator and artist, but she is also essential to the success of the Surgery Communications team as a whole.
She is always ready to tackle a new challenge and provide invaluable insights. Lauren is a fantastic teammate and colleague that our group and the department are lucky to have."
- Jessica Bronchick, MBA, Communications Strategist
Megan Llewellyn, CMI, Medical Illustrator
"Megan is an incredible asset to the department. I’ve had the privilege of working with her on several projects, including the first illustrations of partial heart transplants. She’s a real partner in creating these wonderful drawings that tell a story by themselves. The quality of her illustrations always exceeds my expectations."
- Joseph Turek, MD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery
"We have worked together on several manuscripts and her drawings usually become the cornerstone of the message of the research paper. In one historical piece that we wrote about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, her drawing was so outstanding that the journal asked that it be reproduced on the front cover of that month’s magazine.
We recently wrote a paper about the Lincoln assassination, and she drew a figure that was essential to the understanding of the research paper. We are lucky to have her in our department for her artistic skill and ability to collaborate well with faculty and residents."
- Theodore Pappas, MD, Professor of Surgery, Division of Minimally Invasive Surgery
CT Surgical Research Team
I am proud to announce that the CT Surgical Research team has accomplished another first! Dr. Hartwig is the Principal Investigator of an NIH-funded grant for lung transplant patients, CTOT-45. This is a multi-center interventional trial evaluating an IL-6 inhibitor in the prevention of inflammation/lung injury.
Our Duke team, led by Dr. Hartwig, was able to quickly screen, consent, randomize, and infuse the study's drug within 24 hours. They also collected all required study biospecimens and successfully partnered with SSCRS to get them sent to the core lab within the tight turn-around time required. This is something other sites have not been able to accomplish yet, even while being activated as a site longer.
This took buy-in and support from many ancillary groups across Duke which has been a huge undertaking to operationalize. Major kudos and a big congratulations to Primary CRNC, Kathy Lane, who led these efforts, and Rachel Rice who stepped in to assist Kathy with this case at the very last minute when I had to unexpectedly and urgently be out of office. Shelly Fincannon was also on deck to assist and would have done so willingly. I am proud of the way my team comes together to do whatever is needed time and time again. Their focus never wavers from the patient and future patients of potential benefit.
It is great to be the first to randomize in a large trial like this, but even better to be able to now gain
momentum to continue the successful enrollment in this important trial!"
- Sara Casalinova, Assistant Research Practice Manager