Teresa Tarrant, M.D., an assistant professor of rheumatology in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, has received the school’s James W. Woods Junior Faculty Award.
Teresa Tarrant, M.D., an assistant professor of rheumatology in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, has received the school’s James W. Woods Junior Faculty Award.
The award supports promising young members of the medical school’s clinical faculty early in their academic career. Tarrant will receive $3,000 to explore new ideas and ways of teaching students and treating patients or to investigate biological problems.
Etta Pisano, M.D., the school’s vice dean for academic affairs, said Tarrant has demonstrated considerable skill in the clinical arena and embraced teaching enthusiastically.
Tarrant’s research includes examining how leukocytes – also known as white blood cells, an important part of the immune system – migrate into tissues through the process of chemokine receptor signaling. Researchers believe the area is a promising therapeutic target for patients with organ-specific inflammatory diseases including asthma, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. She has also initiated collaborative research with the UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center to test new nanomaterials for imaging of rheumatoid arthritis disease processes.
The Woods Award was established through the generosity of the late James Watson Woods, M.D., a cardiologist and professor in the School of Medicine from 1953 to 1983.
School of Medicine contact: Tom Hughes, (919) 966-6047, tahughes@unch.unc.edu
News Services contact: Patric Lane, (919) 962-2596, patric_lane@unc.edu