Explore the awards, publications, presentations and other accomplishments of our faculty and trainees.
Recent Highlights
Conference notes
American Society of Anesthesiologists 2026 Annual Meeting, October
Faculty and trainees represented the department across many facets of the program in San Diego. Here is a wrap up of our engagement, at a glance:
Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care (SNACC) 2026 Annual Meeting
Presenters and contributors included Drs. Meghana Bharadwaj, Courtney Gomez, Shuhong Guo, Akira Mukai, and Cori Yang. Topics included traumatic brain injury research, neurocritical care clinical initiatives and surveys, educational and simulation studies, case reports, and crisis management strategies.
Deepak Sharma, MBBS, MD, DM, received the prestigious Teacher of the Year/Lifetime Educator Award. He led a transcranial Doppler ultrasound workshop and the American Society of Anesthesiologists Session, “Clinical Burnout and Wellbeing.” He also participated in the clinical forum “Protecting the Ischemic Brain: The Case for General Anesthesia.”
Alan Yang, MD, MS, co-hosted a real-time, remote simulation session with an international team of experts, on the topic of neuroanesthesia crisis management.
Abhijit Lele, MBBS, MD, MS, FNCS, moderated “Global Neuroanesthesia Clinical Forum: Neuroanesthesia and Critical Care in Low- and Middle- Income Countries: Challenges and Innovations.” His team member, high school sophomore Aria Lele, became the youngest presenter in the history of SNACC as she shared her experience of developing an education app that was launched in our department by Dr. Lele in the last year.
Faculty & trainee updates
Jane Ballantyne, MD, FRCA, received the Denise Albe-Fessard Award at the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) 2026 World Congress on Pain, held recently in Bangkok, Thailand. The award recognizes distinguished service to the IASP. Dr. Ballantyne, who has held several roles for the organization over the years, currently serves as Secretary.
Pediatric anesthesiology faculty members Vincent Hsieh, MD, Ashley Colletti, MD, Casey Quinlan, MD, and Kate Gentry, MD, will present “Maternal Venezuelan Ancestry and Anesthesia: Risk, screening, and management of the MT-ND4 variant in 2026” to attendees of the Washington State Society of Anesthesiologists webinar on December 12.
Cindy Mei, a medical student from Carle Illinois College of Medicine who participated in the Foundation for Anesthesia Research (FAER) Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellowship summer program under the mentorship Li Li, MD, PhD, won 3rd place FAER Medical Student Abstract Award at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Annual Meeting.
Jake Sunshine, MD, presented Grand Rounds on scalable detection of cardiopulmonary emergencies in out-of-hospital environments at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was also a featured presenter at Redefining Healthcare in the Age of AI, a Nature Conference, held September 8-10 in Paris, France.
Deepak Sharma, MBBS, MD, DM, is an editor of Newfield and Cottrell’s Handbook of Neuroanesthesia, Sixth Edition, published September 2026.
Karen Domino, MD, MPH, presented Grand Rounds in person at Mayo Clinic Florida on September 21. The topic was “2025 ASA Practice Guideline on Monitoring and Antagonism of Neuromuscular Blockade.” Dr. Domino currently leads the American Society of Anesthesiologists Committee on Practice Parameters.
Michele Curatolo, MD, PhD, along with his multi-institutional team of collaborators, received an NIH R01 award to continue research on the mechanisms of human neck pain, with a perfect application score.
Matthew Walker, PhD, recipient of the American Heart Association Bridge Career Development Award, was invited to speak at the AHA Basic Cardiovascular Science Summer Conference in July. He presented “Targeting mitochondria genome for heart failure therapy.”
Rebecca C. Dale, DO and Wenyu Pan, MD co-chaired the 16th John D. Loeser Pain Conference, hosted by the UW School of Medicine on October 30. The in-person, full day event also featured Isuta Nishio, MD, PhD, Tasha Parman, DPT, and Rosanne Sheinberg, MD, ABoIM.
Zain Wedemeyer, a research engineer of Gavia Labs at UW Medical Center – Montlake, is a Spring 2026 recipient of the University of Washington’s CoMotion Innovation Gap Fund. The funding program supports researchers working on projects with commercial potential. His project, ThumbSense, was submitted in collaboration with a team that included Kelly Michaelsen, MD, PhD; Srdjan Jelacic, MD, FASE; and Andrew Bowdle, MD, PhD, FASE.
Dustin Long, MD, was awarded an NIH R35 for his project, “Targeting the preoperative microbiome for the prevention of surgical site infection and prophylactic antibiotic resistance.”
Dan Raftery, PhD, was awarded a NIH S10 grant to support the purchase of an Advanced Multiplexed UPLC-MS/Mass Spectrometry System for Target Metabolomics.
Shabnam Salimi, MD, MSc, was selected as the recipient of our department’s Spring 2026 Pilot Grant Award for her project, “Detection of Early-stage Chronic Kidney Disease Using Bayesian-based Metabolomic Clocks.”
Sara Nikravan, MD, FASE, FCCM, presented “POCUS Revolution” at Grand Rounds for the Department of Anesthesiology at Washington University in St. Louis in July. She also delivered the Kerber-Kirkpatrick Ethics/Humanitarian Lecture at the 2026 American Society of Echocardiography Scientific Sessions. Her topic, “POCUS at the Heart of Global Health,” reflected on the ways point-of-care ultrasound can empower healthcare providers, strengthen systems, and foster meaningful global partnerships.
Tonya Palermo, PhD, joined the North American Pain School, held in Quebec, Canada at the end of June, as a guest speaker. She was also inducted as a 2026 USASP Fellow at the United States Association for the Study of Pain 2026 Annual Meeting. The highest class of membership within the USASP, the designation recognizes members who have demonstrated excellence in advancing the understanding of pain through sustained scholarship leadership and service.
Itay Bentov, MD, PhD, is featured in “Episode 190: Perioperative Care for Older Adults,” part of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Central Line podcast series. He also co-authored the featured opinion piece in the June issue of the ASA Monitor, “The Aging Brain – Our New Frontier in Perioperative Excellence.”
Department Chair G. Burkhard Mackensen, MD, PhD, FASE, FSCAI, co-led multiple live, premiere classes in mitral TEER imaging at the Congenital & Structural Interventions (CSI) Congress, held in Frankfurt, Germany this June. CSI is dedicated to promoting development in the field of structural, valvular and congenital heart interventions worldwide. Dr. Mackensen is the recipient of the American Society of Echocardiography 2026 Outstanding Achievement in Perioperative Echocardiography Award. Read the full announcement.
NIH awarded an R01 to Li Li, MD, PhD, for his project “Elucidating locus coeruleus homeostatic mechanisms in opioid-induced sleep disturbances.”
In the news
A survived execution exposes the grim science of lethal injection // Gail Van Norman, MD — Arizona Mirror
The brain’s own opioids help guide purposeful action // Michael Bruchas, PhD — UW Medicine Newsroom
Brain signals help regulate reward-seeking // Michael Bruchas, PhD — UW Medicine Newsroom
Your sleep supplement might also help with chronic pain // Daron Vandeleur, MD — Health.com
Nerve tissue offers insights into chronic neck pain // Michele Curatolo, MD, PhD — UW Medicine Newsroom
Program improves care for children with brain injury // Monica S. Vavilala MD — UW Medicine Newsroom
Chronic pain is common, yet treatments often fall short // Yian Chen, MD — UW Medicine Newsroom
Select journal publications
Former Postdoctoral Fellow Raajaram Gowrishankar, PhD, is first author of “Endogenous opioid dynamics in the dorsal striatum sculpt neural activity to promote goal-directed action,” published August 31 in Cell. Michael Bruchas, PhD, is senior author. Co-authors include Garrett Stuber, PhD, Zhe Charles Zhou, PhD, Adam Gordon-Fennell, PhD (Stuber Lab alumnus), and Bruchas Lab alumni David Marcus, PhD, and Madelyn Hjort, PhD.
Michael Bruchas, PhD, is senior author and Bruchas Lab alumnus David Marcus, PhD, is first author of “Endocannabinoids facilitate reward engagement through retrograde gain control,” published in Nature on August 26. Co-authors include Azra Suko, PhD, Sayaka Kenmochi, and former Postdoctoral Fellow Sean Piantadosi, PhD.
Matthew Walker, PhD and Rong Tian, MD, PhD, wrote the editorial “Cracking the Code of Cardiac ATP-Dependent Citrate Lyase With Wet and Dry Tools,” which appeared in Circulation on July 20.
Burkhard Mackensen, MD, PhD, FASE, FCSAI, is co-author of “Guidelines for the Intraprocedural Imaging for Mitral Valve Transcatheter Edge-to-Edge Repair (M-TEER): Recommendations from the American Society of Echocardiography,” published in Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography (June 2026)
Monica Vavilala, MD is first author of “Results of the Pediatric Guideline Adherence and Outcomes (PEGASUS) Program Versus Usual Care Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury,” published in Critical Care Medicine (June 2026). Julia Velonjara is a contributor.
Garret Stuber, PhD, is senior author of “Prefrontal to ventral tegmental area dynamics drive contingency degradation,” published in Nature (May 2026). Co-authors include Madelyn M. Hjort, PhD (first author, former member of the Stuber Lab), Michael Bruchas, PhD, and Adam Gordon-Fennell, PhD.
Tonya Palermo, PhD, is senior author of “Patient global impression of change in pediatric chronic pain clinical trials: A review and secondary analysis of randomized controlled trial data,” in Journal of Pain (May 2026). Rui Li, PhD, is a co-author.
Michael Bruchas, PhD, is senior author of “Identification of a stress-sensitive endogenous opioid-containing neuronal population in the paranigral ventral tegmental,” published in Neuropsychopharmacology (April 2026). Co-authors include Bruchas Lab alumnus David Marcus, PhD.
Ian Jones, MD, is first author of “Perioperative Dexamethasone in Periprosthetic Joint Infection Surgery: Diabetes-Stratified Results From a Propensity Score-Matched Retrospective Cohort Study.” Anesthesia & Analgesia (April 2026)
Burkhard Mackensen, MD, PhD, FASE, FCSAI, is first author of “Adapting Interventional Echocardiography to New Techniques: Echocardiographic Guidance for Transcatheter Myotomy Using Septal Scoring Along the Midline Endocardium” in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography” (March 2026). Co-authors include Ester Canovas-Roderiguez, MD, Srdjan Jelacic, MD, and Richard Sheu, MD.
Kushang V. Patel, PhD, MPH, is senior author of “Integrated Nurse Care Management to Reduce Pain Interference for Primary Care Patients in Rural Communities: Results from a Pilot Study.” Pain Medicine (February 2026)
Karen Domino, MD, MPH, is senior author of the “2026 American Society of Anesthesiologists Practice Guideline on Perioperative Pain Management Using Local and Regional Analgesia for Cardiothoracic Surgeries, Mastectomy, and Abdominal Surgeries.” Anesthesiology (January 2026)