UMB recognizes Dr. Adam Puche, Professor Kathleen Hoke, Dr. Luana Colloca, Dr. Joga Gobburu, and medical student Nicol Tugarinov for their outstanding achievements and contributions to the University.

Photo: Top row, from left: Nicol Tugarinov, Kathleen Hoke, Luana Colloca. Bottom row, from left: Adam Puche, Joga Gobburu.

Every fall, we dedicate one week to commemorating the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) rich history and celebrating the future we’re building together. Among the highlights of Founders Week is recognizing the extraordinary work of our faculty, staff, and students with awards that signify outstanding accomplishments in education, public services, entrepreneurship, research, and academics. Here are the 2024 recipients:

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR
Adam C. Puche, PhD
School of Medicine
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Neurobiology

Dr. Puche has been a member of the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Department of Neurobiology for more than 25 years and, as the department’s vice chair, manages and executes the school’s anatomic education mission. He recently spearheaded the first gross anatomy lab renovation on the campus in 50 years, resulting in the state-of-the-art Maurice N. Reid, MD ’99 Anatomy Teaching Facility.

Puche is widely known across UMB’s schools for teaching the foundational medical disciplines of gross anatomy, histology, and embryology. His work has transformed the way UMSOM approaches anatomy education, innovations that have benefited core medical and allied health courses at UMSOM and the dentistry and graduate studies schools.

He began leading the UMSOM gross anatomy program nearly 15 years ago and has received awards from every graduating medical class he has taught. He was inducted into the Pass and Susel Academy of Teaching Excellence in 2020 and was named UMSOM’s Medical Educator of the Year in 2023. He also received the 2019 University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor that the board bestows to recognize faculty achievement.

Puche also is a highly funded basic science researcher serving as a principal investigator (PI)/multiple PI on R level grants. He has chaired the Maryland State Anatomy Board since 2017, responsible for contracts and appropriations over $3 million annually. In 2020, the governor appointed Puche director of operations of the Maryland Mass Fatality Plan, activated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Puche earned his PhD from the University of Melbourne in Australia and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Michael T. Shipley, PhD, formerly the Donald E. Wilson, MD, MACP Distinguished Professor and chair of UMSOM’s Department of Neurobiology.

PUBLIC SERVANT OF THE YEAR
Kathleen Hoke, JD
Francis King Carey School of Law
Law School Professor
Executive Director, Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy
Director, Network for Public Health Law-Eastern Region

Professor Hoke developed and teaches the Public Health Law Clinic, engaging Maryland Carey Law students in the work of the Network for Public Health Law (the Network) and the Legal Resource Center for Public Health Policy (LRC). She also teaches Public Health and the Law, introducing students to the legal framework within which the public health system operates.

The Network provides technical legal assistance to national, state, and local public health professionals and their attorneys, legislators, and advocates working to develop sound public policy to improve public health.

Under Hoke’s direction, the Network’s Eastern Region has focused on maternal and reproductive health, cannabis regulation, environmental health, food security, housing stability, and injury prevention. She has conducted research and prepared materials related to regulating the donation of food, expanding access to reproductive health care, and enhancing tenants’ ability to secure safe and affordable housing.

Through LRC, Hoke provides technical legal assistance to Maryland state and local health officials, legislators, and organizations working in tobacco control, injury prevention, and cannabis regulation. Recent work has focused on regulating electronic smoking devices, local government powers in cannabis regulation, and preserving Maryland’s motorcycle helmet requirement.

Hoke worked with a coalition to secure passage of Maryland’s Child Victims Act of 2023 to allow survivors to bring lawsuits against organizations that harbored abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred. She filed an amicus brief on behalf of survivors and legislators in the Supreme Court of Maryland, arguing in favor of the constitutionality of that act.

Hoke received the Jennifer Robbins Award for the Practice of Public Health Law from the American Public Health Association in 2016. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Towson University and graduated from Maryland Carey Law in 1992.

RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR
Luana Colloca, MD, PhD, MS
School of Nursing
Professor, Department of Pain and Translational Symptom Science
Director, Placebo Beyond Opinions Center

Dr. Colloca is a University of Maryland MPower Professor who has conducted pioneering, groundbreaking studies that have advanced scientific understanding of the human brain’s ability to regulate the pain experience and led to the development of novel strategies to optimize therapeutic outcomes in clinical practice.

Her research includes the role of neurobehavioral and genetic influences on a newly described model, namely expectancy-induced analgesia. A National Institutes for Health (NIH)-funded principal investigator with more than 19,000 citations, Colloca is considered a world expert in the fields of placebo/nocebo effects and mechanisms of pain modulation, including digital therapeutics such as virtual reality applied to pain management.

Her lab’s research has been published in top-ranked journals including Biological Psychiatry, Pain, JAMA, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Reviews Disease Primers, Nature Mental Health, and Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

Colloca serves as director of the Placebo Beyond Opinions Center, which is committed to advancing interdisciplinary research and education on placebo, nocebo, and expectation effects, with a particular focus on addressing disparities.

She holds secondary appointments as an associate professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Her honors include the prestigious Dubner and Patrick Wall Awards from the International Association for Study of Pain (IASP). She serves in leadership roles internationally as chair of IASP’s Pain and Placebo Special Interest Group and treasurer of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies.

DAVID J. RAMSAY ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR
Joga Gobburu, PhD, MBA, MSc
School of Pharmacy
Professor, Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research
Director, Center for Translational Medicine

Dr. Gobburu is a world-renowned scientist known for transforming the field of translational medicine, which integrates knowledge across experiments and clinical trials to lay the groundwork for strategic decisions on drug regulation and/or drug development and precision medicine.

Gobburu’s experience as a senior biomedical research scientist and director of pharmacometrics at the Food and Drug Administration gives him unique insight into the technical, regulatory, and decision-making aspects of all phases of drug development.

In 2011, he joined the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, where he created a top-notch research and education program in pharmacometrics and introduced the first 100 percent online MS in Pharmacometrics program. He also founded the Center for Translational Medicine, which uses quantitative medicine to analyze data from experiments and clinical trials to help reduce the time it takes to bring a drug to market.

On the entrepreneurial front, Gobburu co-founded PumasAI, Inc., which provides pharmaceutical scientists, health care providers, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and regulatory agencies with a data analytics suite, clinical decision support system, and strategic and scientific consulting. He also co-founded VivPro Corporation, which offers a bio-intelligence software platform and innovative services to help clients make evidence-based clinical, regulatory, and business decisions.

In 2023, Gobburu received the Sheiner Lecturer Award from the International Society of Pharmacometrics for his long-standing contributions to the field of pharmacometrics and, in 2019, the Sheiner-Beal Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

He obtained his BPharm and master’s degrees in chemistry from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India, his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from North Dakota State University, and his MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

STUDENT OF THE YEAR
Nicol Tugarinov
School of Medicine
MD Student, Class of 2025

Ms. Tugarinov is a fourth-year student who has made her mark at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) through her research, volunteer, and leadership endeavors and dedication to exploring the intersection of clinical medicine, leadership, research, humanism, and advocacy.

Tugarinov received honors in her pre-clerkship courses and clinical rotations, was recognized as a UMSOM PRISM Scholar in 2022 for an outstanding research initiative that earned her a competitive eight-week funded summer externship, and attended conferences across the country to present impactful work. She also has devoted countless hours to UMSOM’s Admissions Committee as an interviewer and screener, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education as a subcommittee member, and is involved in many extracurricular activities.Tugarinov aims to foster a diverse population in the medical field, advocating for women in medicine and students with disabilities. She has promoted reproductive rights as co-president of Medical Students for Choice, been a hospice volunteer at the Jewish Social Service Agency, and focused on mental health as a wellness representative to UMSOM’s Student Government Association.

She was instrumental in organizing the Peer Support Network, which supports fellow students during their medical school journey. The group launched in August 2023, and she has been co-president since May 2024.

She is on the Wellness Subcommittee of the Gold Humanism Honor Society’s (GHHS) National Advisory Council and holds numerous leadership positions in UMSOM’s chapter of GHHS, which advocates for compassionate care in the medical profession.

Tugarinov has authored or co-authored eight journal articles, made 15 poster or oral presentations, and participated in research projects on topics such as benign gastric outlet obstruction, prenatal neurological abnormalities and postnatal outcomes, and the impact of accountability with mindfulness practices in medical students.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in pharmacology from McGill University in Montreal.

Note: Stories about the winners will be published on The Elm and Founders Week websites in September and October.