For the Record provides information about recent professional activities and honors of University of Delaware faculty, staff, students and alumni.

Recent appointments, presentations, publications and honors in the College of Health Sciences include the following:

Appointments

Liam Festa, research assistant, and Susanne Morton, associate professor, both in the Department of Physical Therapy, were accepted into a new cohort as part of the TiDe (Training in Diversity for Rehabilitation Research Education) program and attended the recent TiDe conference in Alexandria, Virginia, at the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Festa joins as a new student trainee, where he will conduct research with a faculty member over the next two years to develop expertise in clinical research. He aims to acquire his Ph.D. and develop his career as a clinical scientist to enhance patient care. Morton is serving as a faculty member and her research is focused on understanding how the brain controls movement and the process of learning motor skills.

“The most important aspect of this program is improving diversity among rehabilitation research,” Festa explained. “If we genuinely want to help all people, we need to have all voices heard. One of the roles of student trainees is for us to provide feedback to faculty to make the environments more inclusive, and I’m excited to collaborate with other people wanting to achieve the same thing.”

"The TiDe Program provides both students and faculty with instruction and support in implementing meaningful actions that will improve access for and inclusion of people of diverse backgrounds in the pathway to becoming rehabilitation researchers," said Morton. "I look forward to my continued involvement in the program." 

Honors

Esther Biswas-Fiss, professor and chair of the Department of Medical and Molecular Sciences in the College of Health Sciences, was featured on an expert panel at Foundation Fighting Blindness’ VISIONS 2024 Conference in Chicago in June. The panel included experts in vision research, clinical scientists and retina specialists in emerging therapies who engaged with patients with Stargardt disease and inherited retinal diseases. Biswas-Fiss, who’s spent her entire career on vision research, was also recently appointed to a ClinGen expert panel through the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Biotechnology Information (NIH NCBI). Founded in 2013 by the National Human Genome Research Institute, ClinGen is a growing collaborative effort involving three grants, nine principal investigators and over 2,500 contributors from more than 68 countries. Biswas-Fiss was selected to serve on the ABCA4 Variant Curation Expert Panel, which determines the pathological significance of the ABCA4 gene implicated in inherited visual diseases. “There’s a backlog of variants, and for the ones that have been classified, our panel is tasked with determining whether they are really pathogenic or benign. Determining the authenticity is so important, so I was honored to have been selected to serve on this panel,” said Biswas-Fiss.

Heather Milea, family nurse practitioner and adult-gerontology acute care practitioner at the Nurse Managed Primary Care Center, received the 2024 Delaware State Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP). Each year, the AANP recognizes a nurse practitioner from every state who has demonstrated excellence in clinical practice and advanced the visibility of nurse practitioners. Award recipients were honored at the AANP State Awards for Outstanding Contributions Ceremony as part of the 2024 AANP National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. As lead clinician and first nurse practitioner for the University of Delaware’s community healthcare and wellness initiative, H.E.A.L.T.H. for All, Milea works to identify gaps for Delaware community members in healthcare and health literacy, bring equity in healthcare to those in economically or socially marginalized communities, and guide experiential learning opportunities for nursing and nurse practitioner students, especially through direct primary care services. “My work supports the independence of the nurse practitioner profession in Delaware through personalized, holistic care for our patients as well as the management of chronic and episodic conditions,” said Milea. “This award recognizes the holism we practice as nurse practitioners, makes the role visible to others as a trustable and committed discipline, and showcases the creativity and dedication we have when caring for our community.”