Peds urology specialist, metabolic diseases expert, neurology postdoc join faculty

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Mark A Barraza, M.D.

Dr. Mark A. Barraza, assistant professor of urology at the Mayo Medical School, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Florida College of Medicine and chief of the Division of Pediatric Urology at Nemours Children’s Clinic, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of surgery.

After receiving his B.A. in zoology with special distinction from the University of Mississippi in 1975, Barraza earned his M.D. cum laude at UMMC in 1980. He had an internship in general surgery from 1980-81 and a residency in general surgery from 1981-82 at Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas; a residency in urology from 1982-84 and was chief resident in urology from 1984-85 at UMMC; and a fellowship in pediatric urology at Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, from 1985-86.

Barraza initially joined the Division of Pediatric Urology at Nemours Children’s Clinic in 1986 and became chief of the Division of Pediatric Urology in 1996. He concurrently served as clinical assistant professor of surgery (urology) at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, from 1990-99 and as an assistant professor of urology at the Mayo Medical School, Jacksonville, Florida, from 1994-99. He first joined the UMMC faculty as a professor of pediatrics in 2000 and served until 2006, when he returned to Nemours Children’s Clinic; in 2009, he again became chief of the Division of Pediatric Urology there. Since 2011 he also had served as an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville.

A member of Phi Kappa Phi and Alpha Omega Alpha honor societies, Barraza is the author or coauthor of 16 articles in peer-reviewed publications and has given more than 30 invited presentations at scientific meetings internationally.

Yann Gibert, Ph.D.

Dr. Yann Gibert, senior lecturer in medical biotechnology and head of the Metabolic Genetic Diseases Research Group at the Deakin School of Medicine, Geelong, Australia, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of cell and molecular biology with a dual appointment with the UMMC Cancer Institute.

After receiving his B.Sc. in biology from the University of Pau, France, in 1997, Gibert entered the French military and was awarded the Medal of National Defense for his service in the 17th Regiment of Artillery, Biscarrosse. In 1998 he received a graduate diploma magna cum laude from the University of Limerick, Ireland, and the University of Pau before earning his M.Sc. in biochemistry magna cum laude at the University of Limerick in 2001 and his Ph.D. in developmental genetics magna cum laude at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in 2005. He then had a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Functional Genomics of Lyon, France, from 2004-07 and was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, from 2007-09.

Gibert joined the Tufts School of Medicine, Boston faculty in 2009 as a research assistant professor; two years later, he moved to the Deakin School of Medicine. In 2016 he obtained the Australian Graduate Certificate of Higher Education. From 2014-18, Gibert was a lifesaving captain and senior instructor at one of the most dangerous beaches in Australia and performed or supervised several rescues.

An active member of the British Society for Developmental Biology, the American Endocrine Society and the Australian and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology, Gibert organized the first South Pacific Medaka-Zebrafish Meeting in Melbourne, Australia. Keynote speaker for the first International Symposium on Lipid Science and Biotechnology in 2017, he has given several invited presentations internationally. He is the author or coauthor of more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications, serves as a reviewer, editor or invited editor-in-chief for a number of professional journals and has helped obtain two patents.

Omar Christopher Logue, Ph.D.

Dr. Omar Christopher Logue, recently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Neurology at UMMC, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of cell and molecular biology after a brief stint as an instructor in neurology.

After receiving his B.S. in biology from Millsaps College in 1993, Logue served as a laboratory technician in the Department of Microbiology at UMMC from 1993-97 before joining the U.S. Army. He served as airborne infantryman in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from 2001-06, then entered graduate school in the neuroscience program at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He earned his Ph.D. there in 2014 and became a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Neurology. During his postdoctoral training he was selected by the Office of Postdoctoral Studies to attend the Millsaps Business Advantage Program in fall 2016.

An active member of the American Heart Association and the American Physiological Society and an affiliate member of the Myrlie Evers Williams Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities, Logue is the author or coauthor of eight articles in peer-reviewed publications and 19 research abstracts and posters. Recipient of the 2018 Trustmark Postdoctoral Fellow Publication Award, he has given five presentations at scientific meetings nationally and has served as a reviewer for a number of scientific journals.