Debra Haring Excellence in Research Award

This year’s Debra Haring Excellence in Research Award recipients are pioneering faculty members whose research has included significant advancements to better understand and diagnose cancer. The award will be presented to Vera Gorbunova and posthumously to Kevin J. Parker, who died in late December at the age of 71.

The award memorializes the late Haring, a former assistant dean for grants and contracts who worked tirelessly to advance the research of faculty in the School of Arts & Sciences and the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences before her death in 2022.

Each year, the honor recognizes one faculty member from each school whose research has had a transformational impact on their field, or whose body of work has changed their field in positive ways.

Vera Gorbunova

Gorbunova is the Doris Johns Cherry Professor in the Departments of Biology and of Medicine, the director of the Upstate NY Comparative Biology of Aging Nathan Shock Center, and a researcher with the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Rochester Aging Research (RoAR) Center and Wilmot Cancer Institute.

“Vera is a true leader in the field and has achieved world-class prominence,” says John Sedivy, Herman C. Bumpus Professor of Biology and associate dean and director of the Center for Biology and Aging at Brown University. “She is widely recognized as the top scholar in the fields of comparative biology, DNA repair and aging.”

Describing Gorbunova’s research as “broad and highly original,” Sedivy expressed confidence that “studies of long-lived animal species pioneered by Vera will yield many important discoveries in the future.”

Among many her many research efforts to unlock the drivers of aging, Gorbunova will lead a new project that will test whether a drug originally developed to treat HIV can quiet a chronic immune response triggered by the body’s own DNA, to help preserve overall health and function later in life.

Kevin J. Parker

Parker was the William F. May Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences and is remembered as a pioneer in the field of ultrasound imaging and a revered faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“A pioneer in medical imaging, Kevin fundamentally changed the field through innovations that bridged engineering, physics, and clinical practice,” says Marvin Doyley, the Wilson Professor of Electronic Imaging and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “His groundbreaking contributions to ultrasound elastography, sonoelasticity imaging, and tissue characterization have established new diagnostic possibilities and inspired research programs worldwide.

Doyley also praises Parker’s “more recent development of H-Scan ultrasound imaging, which provides a novel method for visualizing tissue microstructure and exemplifies his lifelong commitment to pushing scientific boundaries and opening new frontiers in biomedical imaging.”

In 2016, Parker became the first person from URochester to be named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He was also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He earned numerous awards and accolades over his career, including URochester’s George Eastman Medal, the AIUM Joseph Holmes Pioneer Award for Contributions to Medical Ultrasound, the Eastman Kodak Outstanding Innovation Award, and the Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology World Federation Prize.