JHU teams take top-three places in Mosh Pit biz competition

For the fourth year in a row — in fact, since the competition began — a team from Johns Hopkins has grabbed the brass ring in the Mosh Pit business plan competition sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Technology Council.

Students Dan Higginson and Jordan Swanson, postdoctoral fellow Paul M. Kim and predoctoral fellow Krisha Juluri — all from the School of Medicine — pitched their plan for a Web-based marketplace for plasmid exchange to a panel of judges who had to be convinced to invest their imaginary dollars in the various competitors' efforts. The team, which called itself GeneTrade, won $15,000 and will receive free business advisory and a year's worth of free office space to get their venture going.

Second- and third-place finishers were also JHU teams. Muro (Lai Hock Tay, Winnette McIntosh Ambrose and Lefei Sun) came in second with its idea for a device to screen for infectious diseases and biological threats using tears rather than blood. Placing third was Smart Health (Frank Zhu, Yu-Kuan Lin and Menghui Tsai) with a plan to build micro-scale glucose sensors for use by diabetics. These teams won $10,000 and $5,000, respectively.

 

Ronald Peterson inducted into Maryland Business Hall of Fame

Ronald R. Peterson, president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Health System, and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine, has been inducted into the Maryland Chamber of Commerce's Maryland Business Hall of Fame.

Currently vice chairman of the Governor's Workforce Investment Board, he is the past chairman of Baltimore's Workforce Investment Board and a member of the board of the Maryland Mentoring Partnership and the Central Maryland United Way, and is a past member of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce board. Peterson also serves as chairman of Johns Hopkins Community Physicians and as a trustee of the Johns Hopkins Home Care Group.

 

New nursing options to focus on emergency preparedness

Two new graduate options now offered by the School of Nursing will prepare nurses for pivotal leadership roles during disasters and mass casualty incidents. Health Systems Management: Emergency Preparedness/Disaster Response — a clinical nurse specialist track in the Master of Science in Nursing program — and a post-master's certificate option are designed for nurses seeking strategic skills in planning, managing and responding to large-scale emergencies or disasters.

The program was designed by Marguerite Littleton-Kearney, an associate professor and a captain in the Navy Nurse Corps (Reserve Component), in response to her concerns following the 9/11 disasters. In the event of mass casualty incidents, bioterrorism and natural disasters, Littleton-Kearney said, nurses are uniquely positioned to assume leadership roles in the education of first responders and to coordinate hospital triage planning, disaster drill design and implementation, and patient management.

Students will graduate with the tools to embark on a career path to assume leadership roles for emergency preparedness in hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory centers, the military, government agencies and other settings.

 

Golden Knights parachute team to land on Homewood Field

The U.S. Army's Golden Knights parachute team will be jumping the flags and game ball into the stadium on Homewood Field on Saturday, May 7, when alumni gather for Homecoming Weekend's lacrosse matchup against Loyola.

One of the premier parachute teams in the world, the Golden Knights are being hosted by the Military Science and Athletic departments. They are expected to make their jumps from about 3,500 feet.

 

Bayview among nation's top performance improvement leaders

Bayview Medical Center was named last week as one of the nation's top performance improvement leader hospitals by Solucient, a leading provider of strategic business and clinical information for the health care industry.

Bayview and its senior management team were recognized for developing consistent and effective organizationwide performance improvement across critical measures at a faster rate than other U.S. hospitals between 1999 and 2003. These measures include quality of care, operational efficiency and financial performance.

The findings appear in the April 25 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

 

Researchers receive state funds to commercialize technologies

Two Johns Hopkins researchers were announced last week as recipients of funding from the Maryland Technology Development Corp. to commercialize their inventions. The awards were made through TEDCO's University Technology Development Fund.

Scott Peacock of APL received $60,000 to develop a handheld measurement system to monitor the health of engines, such as automobiles and small factory machines. Current vibrometers or machine-mounted accelerometers are too expensive to be practical for this application.

Saeed Khan, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine, received $50,000 to design small molecules to block a tumor cell protein that allows the cell to evade the body's normal tumor cell suppression mechanism. He will use the funding to evaluate the most promising small molecules for the potential development of new cancer drugs.

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