Dr. Mary Naylor's distinguished record of scholarship has long served as a model for junior faculty members. She has garnered a national and international reputation as a geriatric scholar reflecting her humanistic concern for treating the elderly with knowledge and respect. She personifies the very best leadership characteristics as an intellectual, scholar, and educator.

Dr. Barbara Riegel provides national and international leadership in clinical research in chronic heart failure, an extremely common and debilitating syndrome. Heart failure remains the most common cardiac diagnosis in elders and one of the major reasons for hospital admission. She is widely known for her studies of heart failure self-care and disease management.

Stacen Keating, MS, RN, CRNP received her first degree in business from Binghamton University in 1988. Shortly thereafter, she began working in the area of hospital administration for a large cancer center in New York City. Wanting to understand firsthand the experience of patients receiving inpatient cancer treatment she became a hospital volunteer one night a week after work. As a volunteer, Ms. Keating chose to visit with patients who did not have frequent visitors or felt bored or lonely. It was this experience talking and sharing with patients that inspired her to pursue a career in health care where she would have direct patient contact and responsibility caring for predominately critically ill older adults.

As a result of her earlier experience, Ms. Keating pursued her nursing degree and received her BSN from Columbian University in 1992. She went on to complete her master’s degree as an acute care nurse practitioner from Northeastern University in Boston in 2000. She currently resides in New Jersey and is a fourth year doctoral student at Penn studying aspects of how interdisciplinary geriatric researchers work together to design and test interventions to improve health care for the elderly.

John A. Hartford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Scholar

Memorial Sloan-Kettering/Columbia University Scholar