VCU Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research

05/27/2026

Congratulations to Alex Krist, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Director and Community Partnership Research Lead at the Wright Center, on receiving the prestigious Curtis G. Hames Research Award at the 2026 Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Annual Spring Conference! 🏆
The Curtis G. Hames Research Award honors individuals whose careers exemplify a lifelong dedication to research in family medicine. Dr. Krist's work, which spans pragmatic clinical trials, cancer screening, opioid policy, and community-engaged research across hundreds of primary care practices throughout Virginia, is a testament to exactly that kind of career.
A former chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Dr. Krist has spent decades ensuring that research translates into sustained, real-world improvements for primary care practices and the communities they serve.
We are proud to celebrate this well-deserved recognition. Congratulations, Dr. Krist! 🎉
Learn more about the award and this year's honorees: https://www.stfm.org/news/2026/stfm-awards-2026/

05/27/2026

Celebrating the People Behind the Science. 🔬
Every clinical trial begins with people who show up — day after day — to make the science work. On International Clinical Trials Day, we honored the clinical research professionals at VCU's Wright Center whose dedication moves research from discovery to patient care.
Hear from them directly in this short video — and learn why the work is so personal. 🎥
Read more here: https://blogs.vcu.edu/cctr/2026/05/25/celebrating-the-people-behind-the-science-vcus-wright-center-marks-clinical-trials-day/

05/26/2026

Four interdisciplinary research projects earned a total of $100,000 in translational science grants from the C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research at VCU.

These $25,000 pilot awards are funded through the Wright Center’s $27 million Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health, supporting the center's mission to identify and solve systemic hurdles in medical research.

Read more: https://news.vcu.edu/article/from-ai-to-wearables-vcus-wright-center-awards-four-nih-funded-grants-to-accelerate-medical-research

05/26/2026

How does a junior faculty member become a national leader in periodontal research? 🦷

For S. Esra Sahingur, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., the answer began with the Wright Center's KL2 scholarship. Now serving as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Student Research at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Sahingur has secured over $8 million in NIH funding — a career trajectory that illustrates how the Wright Center's K12 Program serves as a launchpad for clinician-scientists.

Read our profile of Dr. Sahingur's journey:

https://blogs.vcu.edu/cctr/2026/05/06/how-a-wright-center-kl2-scholar-became-a-national-leader/

04/17/2026

On April 8, vice president for research and innovation, P. Srirama Rao, Ph.D. presented the annual State of the Research fireside chat with David Oglethorpe, Ed.D., assistant vice president, VCU Academic Affairs Communications.

Thank you to all the Wright Center team members who attended the presentation and who helped conduct outreach about the Wright Center's programs, resources and services, including our Research Design Studios.

Learn more about the State of the Research here: https://news.vcu.edu/article/vcu-aims-to-be-an-international-hub-for-research-vp-rao-says-in-annual-address

04/16/2026

Congratulations to the first cohort of honors students in the VCU–VSU Mentorship Pod, (pictured here with Wright Center associate director, Patrick Nana-Sinkam, MD).

On April 10, we held a closing ceremony at Virginia State University, where VSU honors students were awarded certificates for completing their intensive clinical and translational research training.

The mentorship pod is a collaboration with Virginia State University, one of our partner institutions in our CTSA award.

04/15/2026

A new study at VCU and VCU Health aims to answer a question about how a change to SNAP benefits will affect the daily lives and dietary choices of food-insecure families.

To get meaningful data, they needed hundreds of participants in a matter of weeks.

To collect this high-integrity data on a tight timeline, the Wright Center's informatics team and VCU Health’s Enterprise Analytics built a specialized informatics pipeline within VCU Health’s Epic electronic health record (EHR) system.

The team’s efforts proved highly successful, resulting in the collection of over 300 baseline surveys during the month of March. “This recruitment approach yielded no bot-generated responses, which is a rare feat in incentivized survey research,” said Jennifer Lambert, MD, MHS, who is leading the study.

While the primary goal was learning about how the new policy would affect Virginia families, the project’s technical rigor caught the attention of national evaluators, earning VCU Health its eighth research “gold star” from Epic Systems.

Read more about this innovative informatics story here:

The Wright Center and VCU Health’s Enterprise Analytics built a specialized informatics pipeline within VCU Health’s Epic electronic health record (EHR) system to collect high-integrity data for a study on SNAP benefits. In the process, they earned national recognition for their software innovat...

04/10/2026

“This is really why we do the work that we do. It's to prepare the next generation.” –S. Patrick Nana-Sinkam, M.D. Watch the next generation of medical professionals talk about the Wright Center’s mentoring pod.

04/10/2026

The Wright Center recently welcomed six pre-med honors students from Virginia State University (VSU) to the VCU medical campus.

This visit represents a vital piece of a much larger mission. VSU is a key partner institution in the Wright Center’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This collaboration is a core component of our training and outreach programs, designed specifically to cultivate the next generation of clinical researchers.

Patrick Nana-Sinkam MD FCCP ATSF, Associate Director of the Wright Center, said, "I consider this to be an investment in our workforce, and ultimately an investment in our patients. The better the workforce we have, the better care our patients receive."

A huge thank you to our faculty mentors from the VCU School of Medicine and VCU Dentistry who provided one-on-one guidance to these future physicians:

⭐ Karen D. Hendricks-Muñoz, M.D., MPH (Pediatrics)
⭐ Christina Philips, D.D.S., M.S.D. (Orthodontics)
⭐ Ronsard Daniel, M.D. (Anesthesiology)
⭐ Vashti Bandy, M.D. (General Surgery)

We also want to thank Tamas Gal, Ph.D. and Alexander Brunfeldt, PhD for their expertise in leading the students through a hands-on session with research informatics tools.

Read the full story on our blog: https://blogs.vcu.edu/cctr/2026/04/06/vcu-vsu-partnership-leads-to-a-long-term-mentorship-program-with-undergraduate-honors-pre-med-students/

04/09/2026

Rather than focusing on the areas where mortality is highest, a multidisciplinary team is putting a spotlight on communities that are performing significantly better than expected despite facing the same risks as their neighbors who are struggling.

Fatal drug overdoses have been Virginia’s leading cause of unnatural death since 2013, and researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia Department of Health say more than five Virginians die every day from an opioid drug overdose. Behind the statistics are parents, children, and neighbors lost to the opioid crisis—a human tragedy felt in every zip code, leaving a wake of grief that no ledger can truly capture.

While the headlines often focus on the areas hit hardest, researchers are now looking in a new direction: toward the communities that are beating the odds.

Read the full article: https://blogs.vcu.edu/cctr/2026/03/23/by-finding-bright-spots-in-the-opioid-crisis-vcu-researchers-are-mapping-a-path-to-better-outcomes/