Associates Giving Back to Research: New Investigators Fund


In talking about our recent funding success, I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge the research that was funded directly by our associates! 


Each year, all MedStar Health associates are invited to share their gratitude for each other and the mission we serve by making personal contributions to funds across the system during the Power to Heal Campaign. For the past four years, MHRI has designated these donations into the New Investigators Fund. This fund provides initial funding to researchers who are within five years of joining MedStar to help them pilot their research. We hope that these research projects will lead to external funding.

Thank you to each of the associates who contributed last year. Without your support, we couldn’t make this happen.

This year, we’ve added five more investigators to our recipient list. This brings the total number of research projects supported by associates to 21 since 2016.
  • Ankit B. Shah, MD, MPH, FACC (MedStar Sports & Performance Cardiology Program)
    “Atrial size, function and fitness level among endurance runners with known paroxysmal atrial fibrillation”
  • Leila Shobab, MD, FRCPC (MedStar Washington Hospital Center)
    “Sex-Specific Immune Landscape of Differentiated Thyroid Cancer”
  • Pashna M. Munshi, MD (MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center)
    “We're in This Together: Health-Related Quality of Life, Self Preparedness, and Caregiver Burden in Patient/Primary Caregiver Dyads in the Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Setting”
  • Shashwati Geed, PT PhD (MedStar National Rehabilitation Medicine)
    “Identifying a signal for critical period plasticity: Function of PV+ interneurons post stroke”
  • Yasar Torres-Yaghi, MD (MedStar Georgetown University Hospital)
    “MicroRNA in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Parkinson Disease, Lewy Body Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease”
You can read more about this fund in the press release.

If you are interested in supporting this campaign for the next cohort of New Investigator Fund recipients, you can make a donation today through the Power to Heal website. Select MedStar Health Research Institute from the drop down to support our future researchers.

This post is part of my series on MHRI's funding success in FY20. You can view all the blogs associated with the series here.

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