SPH staff members Lanna Duarte and Mary Shelley were recognized this winter with UMD’s Fearlessly Forward Awards for their outstanding work and innovative projects, and Dr Sarah Peitzmeier is one of 10 faculty to win Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Awards.
Lanna Duarte, graduate recruitment and admissions coordinator, was recognized for tireless service to SPH’s graduate programs. She was awarded the MVP Impact Award, which recognizes staff members who demonstrate a Fearlessly Forward attitude, embody excellence and outstanding service and make substantial contributions to the university.
Duarte’s work, often behind the scenes, has been instrumental in the success of many SPH operations, programs and projects.
“Receiving this award is truly an honor and a validation of the hard work, dedication, creativity, and passion all staff put into their work,” Duarte said. “It’s a recognition that we can have an impact that is sometimes not easily perceived by the broader community.”
On a personal level, Duarte said the award is an incentive to continue striving for excellence and pushing boundaries.
Mary Shelley, SPH director of information technology, was awarded the Terrapin Innovation Award for her project idea to improve SPH’s ability to do research with public health data. Shelley’s creative solution to a workplace challenge captured the essence of moving fearlessly forward.
“My goal was to enable research with large, protected health data sets, which meant creating a system more powerful than a desktop but smaller in scale than high-performance computing,” Shelley said.
“Our team in SPH IT was creative and resourceful, finding a way to do this at very low cost by bridging existing resources to some small, strategic investments.”
Shelley and colleagues continue to work proactively to make sure researchers in the school are aware of this new resource, can use it easily and for free, and have the language they need about system security for grants and data use agreements.
Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier, who joined SPH recently as assistant professor of Behavioral and Community Health, won UMD’s Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Awards (ISRCA), a new funding opportunity to support faculty pursuing independent scholarly and creative projects.
“I am excited to embark on a project to transform findings from a study we did interviewing 20 trans and nonbinary survivors of intimate partner violence into a graphic novel,” she said.
“We hope that the book will help trans and gender-expansive people understand what violence - and resilience - can look like in their communities, and encourage those in unhealthy or abusive relationships to reach out for help.”
Peitzmeier, who says the grant will also allow evaluation of the book as a health communication tool, is co-author (with Maia Kobabe) of the graphic novel Breathe, which is based on her research on chest binding in transmasculine individuals.