This Q&A with Anna Noonan, R.N., vice president of quality and operational effectiveness at the Jeffords Institute for Quality at the University of Vermont Medical Center, was originally published in the November 2016 issue of One.

How do you carefully remove all of the cells from a lung, and then repopulate that ‘scaffold’ with stem cells from a new host? As a summer research fellow in the lab of Professor of Medicine Daniel Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., medical student Chris Bernard ‘19 spent several months testing and re-testing processes and procedures, inching ever closer to an answer to that question.

Student are fanning out across the globe to learn about the practice of medicine in a variety of countries, including Vietnam, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Dominican Republic, and Russia, via the UVM College of Medicine Western Connecticut Health Network Global Health Program.

Last week was my 23rd or 24th trip. Since the earthquake, this was the most moving of my experiences working as a volunteer orthopedic surgeon in Haiti. This trip to Haiti after Hurricane Matthew was a short one and scheduled only to care for some upper extremity injuries that made it to Port-au-Prince from the southern peninsula where over 500 people died and tens of thousands have been left homeless.

The University of Vermont Foundation hosted a special Investiture ceremony for an inaugural endowed position – the Robert W. Hamill, M.D. Green & Gold Professor in Neurological Sciences at the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine – on December 6 in the Hoehl Gallery in the Health Science Research Facility. UVM President Tom Sullivan and Larner College of Medicine Dean Frederick Morin, M.D., presented James Boyd, M.D., associate professor of neurological sciences, as the first Hamill Green & Gold Professor at the event.