New faculty join UMMC academic ranks
Published on Monday, January 29, 2024
Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.
Dr. Paul E. Byers
Dr. Paul E. Byers, recently the State Epidemiologist at the Mississippi State Department of Health, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of preventive medicine in the John D. Bower School of Population Health.
Byers received his medical degree in 1992 from the School of Medicine at UMMC. He completed his internship in the Department of Medicine at UMMC in 1993. He also received some training in the Master of Public Health Program, in applied epidemiology, at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.
He undertook additional training at Rollins, the Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence, the Food and Drug Administration Office of Regulatory Affairs, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and the Emory University School of Medicine.
Byers also served previously on the graduate faculty of the William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Hattiesburg.
During more than 30 years of service at MSDH, he held various leadership positions, most recently as State Epidemiologist. He has also served as Deputy State Health Officer and the medical director for several county health department clinics, the Office of Epidemiology, and the Office of Communicable Diseases.
He has been recognized with a number of honors and awards from the such organizations and institutions as the Mississippi State Medical Association House of Delegates, Mississippi State Board of Health, Mississippi Academy of Sciences, Mississippi School Boards Association, Mississippi Public Health Association, Food and Drug Administration and others.
Byers is the coauthor of more than 30 research publications and has made numerous presentations at professional meetings. He is a member of the Mississippi Public Health Association, Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologist, and Mississippi State Medical Association.
— — —Dr. Leneise Lynn
Dr. Leneise Lynn, recently a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Endodontics, LSU Health Sciences Center School of Dentistry in New Orleans, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of endodontics in the School of Dentistry.
Lynn earned her Master of Science, a Certificate of Endodontics and, in 2003, her PhD at the University of Alabama at Birmingham after receiving her DMD in 1994 from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
Board-eligible in endodontics, she has also worked in private practice at the Louisiana Dental Center in Hammond; Dr. Frances Wiggins Family Dentistry in Plaquemine, Louisiana; Canal Street Family Dentistry in New Orleans; and Distinctive Smiles of Baton Rouge.
Lynn is a multiple winter of the National Institutes of Health Dentist Science Award and the NIH National Research Service Award, Institutional Research Training Grant.
She is a member of the American Dental Education Association, American Dental Association and Omicron Kappa Upsilon National Dental Honor Society.
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Dr. Alexander Vortmeyer
Dr. Alexander Vortmeyer, recently a professor of neuropathology at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, has joined the Medical Center faculty as a professor of pathology in the School of Medicine.
Vortmeyer earned his medical degree in 1988 at the University of Hamburg, Germany, where he received his PhD the same year. He also received advanced or specialty training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, in neuropathology, and the Laboratory of Pathology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, where he also completed numerous molecular pathology projects.
He has served as acting director of neuropathology and director of the Neuropathology Unit at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Montgomery County, Maryland; associate professor of neuropathology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Neuropathology Core at Yale University; and director of the neuropathology fellowship at Indiana University.
Vortmeyer, who is board-certified in anatomic pathology and in neuropathology, has received several awards for his research. The principal investigator or co-investigator for ongoing research projects, he is also the co-author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed chapters, books and reviews; more than 220 peer-reviewed scientific articles; and around 30 peer-reviewed case reports, technical notes and letters.
His list of invited speaking engagements, presentations, symposia and workshops is extensive.