First person – Anna D'Amico

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Anna D'Amico is first author on ‘ PKC-ε regulates vesicle delivery and focal exocytosis for efficient IgG-mediated phagocytosis’, published in JCS. Anna is a PhD student in the lab of Dr Michelle R. Lennartz at Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, USA, where she is using immunofluorescence microscopy to investigate the mechanism underlying the role of PKC-ε in membrane trafficking.

History of the Department of Surgery at Albany Medical Center

Surgeons have always played an integral role in the history of the Albany Medical Center and Albany Medical College. In addition to supporting vital patient care and teaching programs, the Department of Surgery has played an important administrative role providing the college with five deans. The origins of the Department of Surgery reach back to 1910 when the American Medical Association-sponsored Flexner report proposed dramatic changes in the structure and format of medical education in the United States. In response to the recommendations of the report, the medical center restructured its faculty and curriculum to meet the demands of a rapidly advancing profession. One result of this reorganization was the formation of the Department of Surgery in 1912. Dr. Arthur Elting was named the first Chair of the Department in 1915. This report will review the history of the Department, focusing on the eight surgeons who have served as Chair.

Para-incisional tattooing with electrocautery

The authors present a technique using electrocautery diathermy to make surgical tattoos. This method has been used in over 300 patients who underwent head and neck surgery at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Albany Medical College, New York, over a period of five years. A wide variety of operative procedures such as total laryngectomies and neck dissections were performed. The electrocautery surgical tattoos have a major advantage of persisting until the end of the operative procedure by which time other types of tattoos have faded. The technique is widely available, inexpensive, and has to date been complication free.