Recipients of Spirit, Inspiring Change Leadership awards announced

The School of Medicine has announced the winners of the annual Spirit Award and Inspiring Change Leadership Award.

Spirit Award winners are selected for their outstanding dedication, initiative, motivation, positive attitude and customer service. This year’s recipients are Elias Godoy, a necropsy technician in the Department of Comparative Medicine; Jessica Metzger, a lab manager in the Department of Biochemistry; and Debra Scheuch, associate controller in the Office of Fiscal Affairs.

The Inspiring Change Leadership Award, which goes to staff members who have implemented processes that improve the school, was given to Lyn Denend, associate director of curriculum in the Stanford Biodesign Program, and Rohit Gupta, director of the Biobank in the Institute of Immunity, Transplantation and Infection.

The winners will each receive $3,000.

Elias Godoy

As a student at Menlo-Atherton High School, Godoy knew he wanted to work with animals. He started volunteering over the weekends, washing down cages in Stanford’s Veterinary Service Center. Twelve years later, he has held almost every position that involves working with the center’s collection of rodents, fish and large mammals.

“I am an animal lover. It’s important to me that we provide humane care and secure the well-being of the animals,” Godoy said.

The center is used by faculty, fellows, lab technicians and students from a wide range of Stanford departments and divisions, as well as veterinary trainees from throughout the Bay Area, who require animal models for diagnosing and treating diseases that affect both humans and animals. Most of them are taught by Godoy how to care for their animals and the proper method of collecting samples. He estimates he teaches an average of five new users each week.

 “I started at the bottom and worked my way up, so I probably know the center better than anyone,” said Godoy, who now collects tissue and cell samples and maintains the equipment in the necropsy lab. “I like to share what I know. Plus, the people who come here are working to find cures for cancer and other diseases, so it makes me proud to be helping them just a little in my own way.”

He is known for his initiative and works directly with investigators to meet their requests, and he has made crucial decisions about necropsy equipment and supplies.

 “Elias is a tremendous asset to the department. He is dedicated, open and friendly, and works tirelessly with a smile and a joke on hand at any time,” said Sean Adams, PhD, a research fellow in comparative medicine. “He goes out of his way to help students, investigators and the veterinary staff, and spreads his infectious good attitude with whomever he interacts.” 

Jessica Metzger

When Metzger makes her rounds on the fourth floor of the Beckman Center, very little escapes her notice. From checking freezer temperatures and how chemicals are stored to mandated health and safety regulations, she is responsible for the Biochemistry Department’s 23 research labs, equipment, maintenance and training, and for addressing the concerns of more than 250 faculty, students and staff.

Metzger started her Stanford career 17 years ago as an administrative assistant in the Department of Pediatrics and quickly took on responsibility as a facilities coordinator. A colleague suggested she apply for the position of lab manager for biochemistry, where she has remained for the past 14 years. Aside from ensuring best practices and training all new students, staff and faculty, Metzger — an expert on space planning and on finding the best sources for furniture and equipment — must manage a complicated system of upgrades and laboratory renovations.

“The biggest challenge is coordinating project schedules with researchers to have the least impact on their work,” she said. “I’ve had to re-utilize the space in several areas within the department to accommodate new faculty and move current faculty into newly renovated lab areas. There has been an enormous amount of planning and scheduling of construction and crews.”

Her impact extends beyond the Biochemistry Department’s walls. She helped another department prepare for a major electrical upgrade and arranged for the repair of the building’s elevator. She established a website that provides user instructions on all major pieces of the department’s equipment and manages a shared stockroom of student supplies.

“This award is such an honor and a complete surprise,” Metzger said. “I am so humbled to have been nominated.”  

Debra Scheuch

After 38 years at Stanford, Scheuch has gone from typewriters to databases and from interdepartmental envelopes to e-mail. But what hasn’t changed is her love of numbers and her willingness to find solutions when the answer is not quite what was expected.

“The technology has changed and made information more accessible and more responsive,” said Scheuch, who started at the school’s Office of Fiscal Affairs in 1977 as her first job after graduating from San Jose State. “But it’s always changing and always challenging.”

Despite a short stint as an administrative assistant in the medical school’s development office and seven years as an administrator in the Department of Pathology, Scheuch knew she belonged where she could help with the medical school’s fiscal policy, budgets and financial practices and procedures. She works mostly with department administrators, helping to resolve issues and coming up with options. Her institutional knowledge, and the extensive network she has established over the years, also allows her to connect resources and point people in the right direction.

“I’m an accountant by nature,” she said. “I like to figure out problems and help to resolve them.”

Her expertise is especially appreciated by her supervisor, Archna Mehta, the medical school’s controller of financial operations and compliance, who has been on the job for only seven months. “Her vast knowledge of the university and the School of Medicine’s financial arena — the budgeting process, understanding policies and procedures — all make her the ultimate go-to person for anyone who has financial questions,” Mehta said. “She is always willing to help and goes out of her way for any request, large or small.”

Lyn Denend

What do you do when a new academic program is introduced? You write a textbook. What do you do when technology and fresh perspectives change the field? You make a second edition.

Denend, who has been with the Stanford Biodesign Program for 1 1/2 years, was formerly at the Graduate School of Business, where she wrote case studies and then served as staff director for its Program in Healthcare Innovation. There she worked with faculty in the GSB and the School of Medicine to “pull their vast experience and wisdom out of their heads and put it onto paper.” The result was a textbook called Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies, a step-by-step guide to medical device development.

“Before the textbook, there really were really no comprehensive teaching materials in place, so we pulled together a journal article here, a presentation there. Eventually, a series of white papers became a 700-page textbook,” she said.

Denend joined the Biodesign Program just in time to lead the development of the second edition of the textbook. “So much had changed in the medical technology sector that we had to revise more than 50 percent of the content.” The new edition was released in February.  

“This is the bible of biodesign and the most recognized textbook for the field,” said Michael Feldstein, MD, a Stanford Biodesign innovation fellow. “It’s used in biodesign programs all over the world. Lyn’s work is of benefit to all of us in the field.”

The textbook is tied directly to the Biodesign Program curriculum, which has changed dramatically since the first edition was published eight years ago. Denend was directly involved in creating and editing a companion website (http://ebiodesign.org), which includes more than 300 video clips of interviews with faculty, fellows and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. This multimedia library complements the content of the textbook.

“Lyn took a leading role in our efforts to reinvent our training approach in biodesign,” said Paul Yock, MD, professor of bioengineering and of cardiovascular medicine and director of Stanford Biodesign. “We are extremely lucky to have her.”

Rohit Gupta

Researchers require a variety of biological material for trials and assays. But thanks to Gupta’s expertise and diligence, processing and classifying biospecimens for translational research has gotten a lot easier for scientists at the medical school.

In addition to his regular duties of managing staff and overseeing clinical studies, trials and registries in the Human Immune Monitoring Center, Gupta set out to establish a well-organized online library of data called the Biobank.

 “There was no system at Stanford to reliably catalog biosamples and pull reports. There was a real demand and a need for a data portal for investigators to access information,” said Holden Maecker, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology. “Rohit had the vision of a Web interface and built it pretty much on his own.”

Gupta, who studied bioscience and mathematics at the University of California-Irvine, came to Stanford 10 years ago, working in the labs of various faculty before joining the center five years ago.

“I’ve always had a passion for programming in the life sciences, and I wanted to apply what I do to make the system more streamlined and easier to maintain,” said Gupta, who did his own coding and testing. “I was fortunate that I was given such great support and autonomy. I never expected such an honor at this point.”

His efforts, in collaboration with oncology research associate Chih Long Liu, PhD, resulted in a quick and easy-to-use website that gives authorized researchers around the country immediate access to database specimens. The system requires no special training, and the data can be used for clinical trial reports, assay-monitoring or grant applications. “This type of system is unmatched anywhere in the research world,” Maecker said.

Gupta is now leading a big-data initiative among senior investigators at Stanford to link clinical and experimental data to the same system.