Dr. William T. Beck
Professor and Department Head, College of Pharmacy
Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, College of Pharmacy
Dr. Beck’s laboratory focuses on the molecular and genetic bases of tumor cell resistance to anticancer drugs, pharmacologic means to circumvent such resistance, splicing factors as novel therapeutic targets, and a translational emphasis to detect and circumvent drug resistance mechanisms in tumors. Dr. Beck has always had a translational focus with the goal of applying laboratory findings to the clinic.

Dr. Judy Bolton
Professor, College of Pharmacy
Dr. Bolton’s research interests involve the study of the oxidative metabolism of catechols and phenols to genotoxic and/or cytotoxic metabolites and the mechanisms by which phenols and catechols exert their biological effects. The major focus of her work is to explore carcinogenic metabolites formed from antiestrogens and the bioactivation of estrogens to carcinogenic quinoids. Dr. Bolton’s work also examines in vitro and in vivo evaluation of the active components for the major dietary supplements by investigating the mechanism of action of these dietary supplements; specifically, botanicals with health benefits for menopausal women.

Dr. C. Sue Carter
Professor, College of Medicine
Co-Director, The Brain-Body Center
Dr. Carter’s Brain-Body Center offers training resources for animal and human research and focuses on translational studies aimed at developing interventions to improve and assess human mental and physical health. Dr. Carter has developed animal and human models relevant to understanding the biological basis of anxiety, depression, and autism.

Dr. David Crowe
Professor, College of Dentistry
Dr. Crowe’s research focuses on transcriptional regulation of genes controlling breast epithelial cell differentiation, proliferation, and transformation. These studies have provided important insights into breast epithelial stem cell biology.

Dr. Barbara Dancy
Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Dancy has published extensively about reducing the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among African American adolescent girls from single-mother homes, reducing health disparities in African American women, and aspects of African American family functioning. One of her currently funded NIH projects is to examine, over a two-year period, the effectiveness of a mother-daughter HIV risk-reduction intervention in increasing the daughter’s self-reported HIV risk-reduction behavior. She is also currently the PI of a T32 training grant for reducing health disparities in the College of Nursing.

Dr. Luisa A. DiPietro
Professor, College of Dentistry
Director and Founder, Center for Wound Repair & Regeneration
Dr. DiPietro’s research goal is to understand the tissue repair process, with a particular emphasis on how inflammation and blood vessel growth influence healing outcomes. A large portion of her research program is directed at understanding the mechanisms that regulate and modify scar formation in wounds and other fibrotic conditions. She is currently the PI of one of just four NIH sponsored national Centers for Innovative Wound Healing Research.

Dr. Pieter de Tombe
Professor, College of Medicine
Dr. de Tombe’s research program is focused on contractile protein function, both in health and in disease, with special emphases on the molecular pathways that regulate contractile activation and relaxation in the heart, the regulation of energy turnover by activated contractile proteins, cardiac signal transduction, and the mechanisms underlying depressed contractile function in congestive heart failure and pathological cardiac hypertrophy.

Dr. Asgerally Fazleabas
Professor, College of Medicine
Dr. Fazleabas is PI of the NIH supported Specialized Cooperative Centers Program in Reproduction and Infertility Research (SCCPRIR). His laboratory's focus is on studying the expression and regulation of uterine endometrial proteins during the period of uterine receptivity and implantation and on the consequences of endometriosis on infertility. 

Dr. Carol Ferrans
Professor, College of Nursing
Co-Director, Center for Population Health and Health Disparities
Dr. Ferrans is Deputy Director of the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to address health care disparities in cancer. She has been conducting studies focusing on quality of life and health disparities for 20 years. An important part of this research has focused on cross-cultural issues, including approaches to increase validity of data, and minority participation in research. She is well-known for developing the Ferrans and Powers Quality of Life Index, which has been translated into 21 languages and used in over 200 published studies. She also developed an instrument to measure cultural beliefs contributing to late-stage breast cancer diagnosis in African American and Hispanic women. She currently has two NCI-funded studies examining cancer survivorship issues for African Americans, and reasons for delay in seeking diagnosis for suspicious breast symptoms. Additional studies have focused on barriers to prostate cancer screening, the effect of mistrust of health care providers on breast and cervical cancer screening, and factors influencing end-of-life decision making by African American caregivers. Dr. Ferrans participated in developing the Illinois Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan for the Illinois Department of Public Health. She also has been a leader in community participatory efforts to address barriers to service access contributing to late stage diagnosis of breast cancer in minority women.

Dr. James H. Fischer
Associate Professor and Assistant Department Head, College of Pharmacy
Director, Office for the Protection of Research Subjects
Dr. Fischer’s research focuses on clinical studies of the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs in patients with epilepsy and during pregnancy. The aim of these studies is to better understand factors influencing drug disposition and response in these populations and their relevance to drug administration in these individuals.

Dr. Marian Fitzgibbon
Professor, College of Medicine & School of Public Health
Adjunct Professor, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine
Associate Director, Center for Management of Complex Chronic Care, Jesse Brown VA Medical Center 
Dr. Fitzgibbon’s work has focused predominantly on health risk reduction interventions in minority populations. She has received grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to conduct randomized clinical trails in obesity prevention in children and obesity treatment in adults. Through her NHLBI funding, she developed Hip Hop to Health, Jr., an obesity prevention intervention with minority preschool children. Published results from this efficacy trial indicated significant differences between treatment and control children measured by body mass index at two-years post intervention. She is now expanding on the success of the trial through an NHLBI-funded effectiveness trial that will investigate whether classroom teachers can be trained to deliver the intervention and achieve similar results. Dr. Fitzgibbon has also conducted combined interventions that address nutrition, weight loss and breast health with Latino and African-American women and is currently conducting an NCI-funded randomized trial with African-American women that will test the efficacy of adding a one-year maintenance intervention to a successful culturally competent weight loss intervention. Dr. Fitzgibbon has also served as a co-investigator and behaviorist on the Diabetes Prevention Program funded through NIDDK and the Nutrition Academic Award funded through NHLBI.

Dr. Geula Gibori
Distinguished University Professor, College of Medicine
Dr. Gibori laboratory research is aimed at defining the action and interaction of cytokines and estradiol on key ovarian and decidual genes whose expressions are essential for the normal progress of pregnancy. Members of her laboratory have cloned several genes that play an essential role in the production of progesterone and estradiol. They are investigating their transcriptional regulation and have generated mice null in these genes. Deletion of one gene has revealed its importance in fetal brain development. They have recently generated mice expressing only one subtype of the prolactin receptor and have discovered that prolactin signaling through the short form of its cognate receptor (PRLRS) has a severe impact on ovarian follicular development and leads to premature ovarian failure and infertility. The cause of this pathology and the signaling mechanism of prolactin through PRLRS are under investigation. Another aspect of Dr. Gibori research activity is focused in defining the interaction and function of decidua-derived proteins in the normal development of the decidual tissue and the survival of fetuses.

Dr. Arden Handler
Professor, School of Public Health
Co-Director, Maternal and Child Health Program
Dr. Handler’s research has traditionally focused on factors associated with adverse pregnancy and perinatal outcomes, with a particular emphasis on access to, satisfaction with, and utilization of prenatal care. She has a solid background in the use of epidemiologic methods for the evaluation of public health programs and has been a leader in developing a conceptual framework for the study of the public health care delivery system. Currently, she is involved in evaluation research with a number of projects focused on improving the health of women and infants on the West and South Sides of Chicago, including "Closing the Gap" (study of the quality of prenatal care in four Chicago communities), "Healthy Births for Healthy Communities" (an infant mortality reduction project with outreach and interconceptional care foci in two Chicago communities), and "Centering Pregnancy" (a group model of prenatal care). In addition, she recently received word that Chicago will be a site for one of the new 22 centers for the National Children’s Study, a longitudinal cohort study of the effects of environmental influences on 100,000 children nationwide; their mothers will be recruited prior to pregnancy and they will be followed from birth through early adulthood. UIC is partnering with Northwestern University (Lead PI) and the University of Chicago in this study; Dr. Handler is the UIC PI.

Dr. Ronald C. Hershow
Associate Professor, School of Public Health
Clinical Associate Professor, College of Medicine
Dr. Hershow has engaged in epidemiologic research that mainly deals with human immunodeficiency virus in women, hepatitis C virus infection, and nosocomial infections. Specific areas of focus include investigation of viral coinfections and other cofactors that may influence HIV disease progression, the early natural history of hepatitis C virus infection, prevention of infectious disease morbidity in substance users, and the epidemiology of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms in hospitals. Since 1989 he has maintained continuous NIH and CDC funding. Recently, Dr. Hershow received funding from NIH to investigate the best ways to promote successful antiretroviral therapy use among HIV-infected injection drug users in Indonesia. He plans to develop interventions designed to advance more effective use of anti-retroviral therapy among hard-to-reach populations in resource-poor areas.

Dr. Karen Kavanaugh
Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Kavanaugh is the Co-Director of the Center for End-of-Life Transition Research, which is funded by the National Institute for Nursing Research at NIH to advance the science of care for people facing the end-of-life transition across the life span. Dr. Kavanaugh has extensive expertise in parent response to pregnancy loss and newborn death, and has completed several NIH funded studies in this area. She is one of a handful of investigators to include minority populations in this research. Her findings include a description of gender differences to loss, including that fathers tend to have an instrumental style of grieving (cognitive-focused), where mothers tend to be intuitive grievers (emotion-focused). She is currently the principal investigator for a multi-site, NIH funded study that examines and compares parent, nurse, and physician perceptions of how parents are involved in life support decisions for their extremely premature infants.

Dr. Alicia Matthews
Clinical Psychologist
Associate Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Matthews’s research interests are cancer prevention, cancer survivorship, and health disparities. She has conducted funded research studies of information-seeking and treatment decision-making among African American cancer patients; factors associated with breast cancer quality of life; anxiety among breast cancer survivors; and evaluation of a targeted breast and cervical cancer education program for African American lesbians and bisexual women. Dr. Matthew’s research focuses on minority populations and hard-to-reach groups.

Dr. Robin Mermelstein
Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Director, Center for Health Behavior Research & Deputy Director, Institute for Health Research and Policy
Dr. Mermelstein has been active in cancer prevention and control and tobacco-related research for over 20 years, with continuous NIH funding as a Principal Investigator since1986. Her smoking cessation research has included developing and evaluating interventions for both adults and adolescents, ranging from intensive clinic-based approaches to more self-help, media based programs, and programs with telephone and internet adjuncts. Dr. Mermelstein is currently the PI on a NCI-funded program project grant, “Social and Emotional Contexts of Adolescent Smoking Patterns,” which will provide an in-depth, multi-level study of the patterns and predictors of adolescent smoking and the development of dependence in a cohort of over 1200 adolescents at high risk for the development of smoking dependence. In addition to her NIH funding, Dr. Mermelstein was the Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Program Office, “Partners with Tobacco Use Research Centers: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Advancing Science and Policy Studies.” As part of this program, the RWJF has collaborated with NIH in funding the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers, and in helping to promote policy-related research within the funded centers. Dr. Mermelstein has chaired several national working groups addressing methodological issues in adolescent tobacco use, and has served on several national-level work groups addressing youth smoking. In 2006, Dr. Mermelstein received the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s Clinical Mentor Award.

Dr. Arlene Miller
Professor & Department Head, College of Nursing
Dr. Miller’s research program includes health promotion for midlife women through the development of culturally appropriate interventions for psychological and physical well-being. Her current NIH-funded research examines the adjustment and mental health of midlife women who are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. She is also a co-investigator on a study to examine the effects of a walking intervention for midlife African American women. 

Dr. Nadine Peacock
Associate Professor, School of Public Health
Dr. Peacock has a PhD in anthropology as well as postdoctoral training in public health and reproductive endocrinology. She has broad research interests in social and cultural components of and influences on women’s reproductive health and health disparities. She is currently conducting a mixed-methods investigation of unintended pregnancy among young African American women in Chicago. Other recent research activities have included qualitative studies of transactional sex and HIV risk in Kenya, stress and pregnancy in African American women in Los Angeles, and prenatal care utilization among low-income women in Chicago. Dr. Peacock teaches graduate courses in qualitative research methods and in reproductive and perinatal health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has particular expertise in computer-assisted analysis of qualitative data, community participatory research, and the bridging of qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

Dr. Mariann Piano
Associate Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Piano's research program is directed at understanding the mechanisms that underlie the adverse effects of long-term heavy and binge/bender alcohol consumption on the myocardium. In both men and women, long-term heavy ethanol use is a prevalent toxic cause of a dilated cardiomyopathy, also referred to as alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM). A major aim of Dr. Piano's research program has been to examine pathophysiologic mechanisms that are involved in the initiation and progression of ACM. Her current program of research funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIH), is designed to examine the cardiovascular effects of binge drinking and cigarette smoke exposure. Pathophysiologic mechanisms investigated by her laboratory include activation mitogen-activated protein kinases, mitochondrial injury and oxidative stress. Similar to other types of cardiovascular diseases, sex disparities exist in the occurrence, manifestations, and outcomes of alcohol-related diseases. In terms of alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy, some research suggests women are more vulnerable to the toxic effects of alcohol. Therefore another major aim of Dr. Piano's research has been to examine how the presence of ovarian hormones or female sex might modulate the effects of alcohol.

Dr. Steven Pogwizd
Professor & Interim Research Director, College of Medicine
Dr. Pogwizd’s lab is focused on understanding the biochemical and electrophysiologic mechanisms underlying lethal ventricular arrhythmias in the failing heart.  

Dr. Laurie Ruggiero
Clinical Health Psychologist
Professor, School of Public Health
Dr. Ruggiero has over twenty years of experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating health behavior change interventions in a variety of behaviors, populations, and settings. One of her research areas includes studying smoking habits in underserved pregnant women, such as developing and testing interventions to help them quit and examining predictors of smoking during pregnancy. Dr. Ruggiero also has a program of research focused on diabetes prevention at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, including clinic and community based approaches.

Dr. Alan Schwartz
Associate Professor and Director of Research, College of Medicine
Alan Schwartz, PhD is an Associate Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Medical Education. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. His education includes a BA in Cognitive Science and Women's Studies, an MS in organizational behavior, and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Dr. Schwartz's research focuses on medical decision making by patients and physicians; he teaches decision making, leadership, and quantitative data analysis to health professions faculty. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Medical Decision Making,and has served on the executive boards of the Society for Medical Decision Making and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

Dr. Dorie Schwertz
Associate Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Schwertz’ research focuses on sex differences and the effects of sex hormones on heart function, development of myocardial pathologies, and the heart’s response to drugs. The ultimate goal of her research is to provide an empirical basis for optimization of gender-specific therapies for heart disease.

Dr. Steven M. Swanson
Associate Professor of Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy
Associate Professor of Surgical Oncology, College of Medicine
Dr. Swanson has two areas of research. One is the biological testing of natural products for anticancer activity where molecular targeted approaches are used to guide the isolation and characterization of novel agents from natural sources such as plants and marine organisms. Another area of focus is the hormonal control of cancers. Recent research in the Swanson laboratory has shown that the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor axis is critical for the progression of breast and prostate cancers. One of the current projects employs cellular and animal models to characterize the signaling pathways involved in maintaining tumor cell viability and tumor growth.

Dr. Debra A. Tonetti
Associate Professor, College of Pharmacy
Dr. Tonetti's research is focused on several aspects of the treatment and development of breast cancer; 1) the mechanism of hormone resistant breast cancer, 2) identification of prognostic markers and new drug targets for treatment, 3) the role of post-lactational involution in the development of pregnancy associated breast cancer, 4) racial disparity in breast cancer.

Dr. Richard Warnecke
Professor Emeritus, School of Public Health
Director, Center for Population Health and Health Disparities
Dr. Warnecke’s current research focuses on health disparities related to cancer screening and early detection in breast cancer. He has a NIH funded research center, The Center for Population Health and Health Disparities and a NIH funded Cancer Education and Career Development grant that supports four to six fellows annually. He is currently mentoring two post doctoral fellows and one predoctoral fellow through the NIH funded program. He is also mentoring a physician who has just finished a Robert Wood Johnson clinical fellowship and is in the final year of a K07 NIH award both focus on patient trust of physicians. He is Associate Director of Cancer Control and Population Science at the UIC Cancer Center. Recently he was co-chair of a training program sponsored by the Office of Behavioral and Social Science to train social workers to conduct Community-based Participatory research. He is also former Director of the UIC Survey Research Laboratory.

Dr. Jacob T. Wilensky
Professor of Ophthalmology, College of Medicine
Director, Glaucoma Service
Dr. Wilensky is a clinical investigator who has focused on the role of various diagnostic procedures in the evaluation of glaucoma patients and on the use of various treatment modalities in therapy of glaucoma patients.  He was the site P.I. for three multicenter clinical trials of glaucoma treatment protocols and has participated in numerous phase III trials of investigational new drugs.

Dr. JoEllen Wilbur
Professor & Independence Foundation Chair in Nursing, Rush University
Dr. Wilbur’s work has focused on midlife women’s symptoms, cardiovascular health, and physical activity. Her research examines physical measures originally developed for men and extended to women’s activity and exercise as a natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy in managing menopausal symptoms. She has a program of research that has been funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Active Living Research to examine determinants of physical activity and test interventions to increase adherence to physical activity in African American women.

Dr. Beata M. Wolska
Associate Professor of Physiology, College of Medicine
Dr. Wolska’s work focuses on membrane and myofilament control of cardiac function, both in physiological and pathological conditions such as hypertrophy and heart failure (HF). Her first project is focused on understanding the mechanisms that link altered myofilament activity in the development of hypertrophy and HF to mutations that cause familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC) . Goals of the project include understanding sex-specific differences in hypertrophic signaling and whether smoking augments the development of FHC and HF. Her second research project examines how nitric oxide regulates cardiac dynamics during different stages of hypertrophy and HF via alteration of myofilament properties and sarcoplasmic reticulum function.

Dr. Julie Zerwic
Associate Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Zerwic researches cardiovascular disease, particularly patients’ interpretations of cardiovascular symptoms and access to health care during an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or stroke, examining the factors that contribute to female and minority patient delay in seeking treatment. Her currently funded research involves tailoring a computerized intervention to facilitate recognition of cardiovascular risk factors and symptoms for the purpose of promoting more timely health care access. The intervention will initially be tested with African American men.