Sigma’s International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame honors Sigma members who have achieved significant and sustained national and/or international recognition for their work, and whose research has impacted the profession and the people it serves.
This year Sigma inducted 20 individuals—representing Australia, Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame during the 32nd International Nursing Research Congress.
NEW | During the virtual event, Sigma President Richard Ricciardi, PhD, CRNP, FAANP, FAAN, hosted four Conversations With the Honorees. View them below to learn more about each honoree's research and nursing journey!
Kuei-Min Chen, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Vice President for Global Affairs and the Director of Center for Long-term Care Research at Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan. Since 2013 she has also overseen the master’s program of Long-term Care in Aging, which is the first master's program of long-term care in aging in southern Taiwan.
Professor Chen has been teaching, practicing, and conducting research in gerontological nursing for almost 30 years. Her research focuses on developing and applying various complementary/alternative therapies to promote the health of older populations. Professor Chen leads an interprofessional research team called the "Health Promotion of Older Adults," and has developed six innovative exercise programs for various older populations that are being used in 212 community care centers and 20 long-term care facilities in Taiwan and by researchers in Australia, England, India, and Hong Kong. They are: 1. The Simplified Tai-Chi Exercise Program (STEP); 2. The Silver Yoga (SY); 3. The Senior Elastic Band (SEB); 4. The Wheelchair-bound Senior Elastic Band (WSEB); 5. The Healthy Beat Acupunch (HBA); and 6. The Vitality Acupunch (VA).
Professor Chen has identified the key health indicators of older adults and developed the "Health Model for Older Adults," which has been highly cited by international scholars. Her work has been disseminated in international journals and conferences. Professor Chen is a national and international leader in research on physical activity intervention and its translation into practice for the purpose of improving the health of older adults.
Kim Dupree Jones, PhD, RN, FNP, FAAN, is the Dean and Professor of the Linfield University-Good Samaritan School of Nursing in Portland, Oregon, USA. Previously, Dr. Jones served as professor of nursing and medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and held faculty positions at the University of Arizona at Tucson, the National College of Natural Medicine, Morehouse and Spellman Colleges, and Georgia State University.
Dr. Dupree Jones’s research expertise is fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disorder that primarily affects women. She has completed 60 studies in fibromyalgia to date, backed by more than $9 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, foundations, industry, and donors. Jones is the president of the Fibromyalgia Information Foundation, a non-profit organization whose aim for the past three decades has been to disseminate scientifically sound fibromyalgia data. She has authored more than 100 publications in this area, and her work is cited in national and international fibromyalgia treatment guidelines and texts.
She holds PhD and post-doctoral degrees from OHSU, a Master’s in Nursing from Emory University, and a BSN from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Jones has been a family nurse practitioner, most recently in the rheumatology clinic at OHSU and The Frida Center for Fibromyalgia. She has also served as a family nurse practitioner at the Centers for Disease Control, the Gwinnett County Detention Center, Ciba Vision, Planned Parenthood, and Southside Health Care, among others.
Faye Gary, EdD, RN, FAAN, is the Medical Mutual of Ohio Kent W. Clapp Chair, Professor of Nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Dr. Gary’s passion for excellence and assisting the next generation of scholars inspired her to build and expand the Provost Scholars program through the plans of two visionary leaders: Provost William Baeslack and Superintendent Ms. Myrna Loy Corley. Her work with these leaders has resulted in the Provost Scholars serving more than 95 students in the city of East Cleveland and impacting the future of middle and high school students over the past six years.
Her research focuses on prevention of mental health disorders, high-risk behaviors, homeless and runaway youth, attention deficit and hyperactivity in children, depression in African Americans, child/adolescent psychiatric nursing, community mental health, and advocacy.
Dr. Gary received her bachelor's degree in Nursing and Sociology from Florida A & M University, her master's degree in Psychiatric Nursing (Child and Adolescent) and Anthropology from Saint Xavier College in Chicago, Illinois, and her doctorate in Childhood Behavioral Disorders and Anthropology from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.
Shannon Scott, PhD, RN, FCAN, is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Translation for Child Health at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Dr. Scott developed the highly successful Translating Evidence in Child Health to enhance outcomes, or ECHO, research program focused on improving health outcomes for children with acute and chronic health conditions. Her research cuts across multiple disciplines and merges research and the arts. Consistently, her research innovations have been awarded national prizes. She is a founding co-director, and the only registered nurse, of Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids, a nationally-funded initiative developed to ensure every child receives the highest standard of emergency healthcare irrespective of where they seek care in Canada.
Dr. Scott is known for her enduring commitment to building capacity in nursing research and has mentored more than 60 trainees and junior colleagues across Canada. She has been awarded multiple honors including a Canada Research Chair, Distinguished Researcher, Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing Excellence in Nursing Research awardee, inductee of the Royal Society of Canada's College of Scholars, Artists & Scientists, and is an inaugural Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Nursing in 2020. Dr. Scott is a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, Ireland, and she holds Adjunct Professor appointments at the University of Manitoba and the Children's Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, Canada.
Lisa Thompson, PhD, MSN, RN, FNP-BC, FAAN, is an Associate Professor at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA with an additional appointment in the Emory University School of Public Health.
Dr. Thompson’s foundational research on environmental health disparities focuses on reducing household air pollutants that contribute to adverse perinatal outcomes, including low birth weight, preterm birth, child stunting, and impaired cognitive development. For nearly two decades, her research has focused on household air pollution. One of her most widely regarded contributions is her development/evaluation of interventions to reduce dependence on household cooking fires in low-resource countries. Because of her prominence in the field and strong publication record, Dr. Thompson has received extramural funding from USAID/TRAction Project, Global Alliance on Clean Cookstoves, Grand Challenges Canada, and National Institutes of Health to design behavioral change interventions to address this common source of toxicant exposure, particularly among women and children. She is a co-investigator on the HAPIN trial—the largest multi-country study to date on household air pollution—which brings together over 50 environmental scientists, physicians, epidemiologists, and implementation scientists from several countries.
In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Dr. Thompson directs graduate studies for the PhD program at Emory School of Nursing. She is co-chair of the Research Working Group, for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nurses (FAAN) and serves on the AAN's Expert Panel on Environmental and Public Health. She has mentored more than 90 masters, pre-doctoral students, and post-doctoral fellows.
Ann Bonner, PhD, MA, BAppSc(Nurs), RN, MACN, is the head of school at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University, in Southport, Queensland, Australia. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kidney Health Service, Metro North Hospital and Health Service where she leads the Kidney Nursing Collaborative Research Centre, and a Visiting Scholar at Princess Alexandra and Logan Hospitals.
Professor Bonner’s 30-year research program focuses on improving outcomes for people along the trajectory of chronic kidney disease; from slowing disease progression to kidney replacement therapies and to end-of-life care. She is a chief investigator in the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Chronic Kidney Disease Centre of Research Excellence and has attracted more than $7 million (AUS) in competitive research funding. Her research interests include symptom management, self-management, health literacy, and advanced practice nursing roles.
Professor Bonner has been published more than 150 times and has delivered over 200 peer-reviewed conference presentations and invited papers. Recognized nationally and internationally as an expert renal nurse, she is a member of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) Chronic Kidney Disease Expert Advisory Group, and the External Advisory Board for the Australian Kidney Trials Network (AKTN). She is a life member of the Renal Society of Australasia.
Raymond Chan, PhD, MAppSc, BNurs, RN, FACN, is the Professor of Cancer Nursing jointly appointed by Princess Alexandra Hospital, Metro South Health, and Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Professor Chan’s research program focuses on optimizing models of care and health services' responses to address the needs of people affected by cancer in the survivorship phase. He is a National Health and Medical Research Council investigator (NHMRC), and his program of research focuses on optimizing models of care and outcomes for cancer survivors. Professor Chan is a chief investigator for four NHMRC project grants and has published more than 140 peer-reviewed articles.
In 2009, his contribution to nursing practice, education, and research was recognized with his appointment as a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing Australia (FRCNA, now FACN). He is a past president of the Cancer Nurses Society of Australia, the peak professional body for cancer nursing in Australia. During his term as CNSA President, he also served on the Executive Council of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and the Intercollegiate Advisory Committee of Cancer Australia
Currently, Prof Chan is the Chair for the Survivorship Study Group of Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer, a board director for the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care, and co-chair for the Scientific Committee of the Primary Care Collaborative Cancer Clinical Trials Group.
Alison Hutchinson, PhD, RN, BAppSci (Adv Nsg), MBioeth, Cert of Midwifery, is a Professor of Nursing in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Deakin University, Director of the Center for Quality, and Patient Safety Research in the Institute for Health Transformation at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and holds a Chair in Nursing at Monash Health.
Her primary research interest centers on improving care through knowledge translation. As director of the Center for Quality and Patient Safety Research, she provides strategic direction for the Center’s more than 40 scholars undertaking research in the areas of patient safety, patient experience, and workforce development. She is one of only a few Australian nurses to have successfully completed a formal post-doctoral fellowship program overseas, having trained at the University of Alberta, Canada. Professor Hutchinson received a national fellowship in knowledge translation award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and a provincial fellowship award from Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.
She brings expertise in the conduct of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research and has attracted competitive research funding from a range of funding bodies. Internationally recognized for her implementation science and knowledge translation research, she has published more than 145 articles, co-authored several book chapters, and is an associate editor for
Implementation Science. She was awarded the title of Alfred Deakin Professor; the highest honor Deakin University can bestow upon a member of the academic staff.
Debra Jackson, PhD, AO, RN, SFHEA, FACN, is a Professor of Nursing at the University of Sydney in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Advanced Nursing (JAN). Prior to that, she was Editor of Journal of Clinical Nursing for a decade.
Professor Jackson is a distinguished nurse scientist and scholar whose career has spanned clinical practice, academic work, research, and scholarship. She is a Fellow of the Australian College of Nursing, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK). In 2015 Debra was the first nurse appointed to a Principal Fellowship of the NIHR-funded Oxford Biomedical Research Center, awarded in recognition of sustained contribution to generating knowledge to enhance the care of NHS patients.
In 2019, Professor Jackson’s work was honored when she was awarded Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to medical education in the field of nursing practice and research as an academic and author. In 2020 she was named as Australia's leading nurse researcher by The Australian newspaper in their list of Australia's Top 250 Researchers, based on the highest number of citations from papers published in the last five years in the 20 top journals in the field. Her research focuses on reducing human suffering associated with preventable pressure injury, particularly in relation to pressure injury in community settings and addressing cultural disparity in skin assessment.
Jane Phillips, PhD, BSc, PGDip, RN, FACN, is Head of School at the Queensland University of Technology School of Nursing in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She is a Registered Nurse with extensive experience as a leader in research and education in the health sector.
Professor Phillips’s interdisciplinary program of research targets the delivery of care that enables people to spend more days in their place of choice, move seamlessly between care settings, and receive the best evidence-based palliative care. At the forefront of her field, she brings her considerable clinical nursing, national policy, and academic expertise to deliver outcomes that are changing practice and enhancing palliative care globally. She was previously the Director of IMPACCT, (Improving Palliative, Aged and Chronic Care Through Clinical Research and Translation).
Gregory L. Alexander, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI, FIAHSI, is the Helen Young Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association Professor at Columbia University in New York, New York, USA.
Dr. Alexander is an internationally recognized nursing informaticist and clinical expert with more than 25 years of research and clinical practice leadership. His program of research is focused on technologies used to support patient care delivery, with an emphasis on aging populations.
Dr. Alexander has been recognized throughout his career by election as a fellow in multiple academies, including the American Academy of Nursing, American College of Medical Informatics, and International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics. Recently he was appointed to the prestigious interdisciplinary National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Consensus Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes, which will make research and policy recommendations for the United States. He has been appointed to the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and received the 2020 Health Information Systems Society-Alliance of Nursing Informatics Leadership Award.
Sharron Docherty, PhD, PNP, RN, FAAN, is an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of the PhD program at Duke University School of Nursing in Durham, North Carolina, USA. She has a secondary appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at the Duke University School of Medicine and is an associate of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society.
Dr. Docherty’s research focuses on improving health outcomes for children, adolescents, young adults, and families undergoing intensive treatment for life-threatening and chronic conditions. She seeks to improve care models, symptom management, and decision making from diagnosis through the end of life. Using methodological expertise in qualitative and complex data integration in mixed methods, she develops and tests interventions for children, adolescents, and young adults using a developmental science framework and a methodological focus on trajectories across time and developmental milestones. The second theme of her research is focused on developing feasible models of palliative care delivery. Current studies include tests of a peer-coaching intervention to address the unique challenges of adolescents and young adults who struggle to deal with disease and manage therapies, and of personalized palliative care delivery to older adults in the ICU using a mobile app.
A core theme across Dr. Docherty's science has been to develop and advance novel research methodologies that capture clinically based, context-dependent evidence that crosses levels of response, and result in intensive, complex, and diverse datasets.
Mark Hayter, PhD, M.Med.Sci, RN, BA (Hons), Cert. Ed, M.Med.Sci, FEANS, SFHEA, FRCSI, FAAN, is the Professor of Nursing and Health Research in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Hull, UK, where he previously served as Head of Nursing and Associate Dean of Research.
Dr. Hayter is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical Nursing, the largest nursing journal in the world, and serves on the editorial boards of Nursing Outlook and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. He edited the Journal of Advanced Nursing for seven years (2013-2010). He holds Visiting Professorial appointments at the University of Genoa, Italy; Yangzhou University, China; and the Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education, Chennai, India. His research has a primary focus on reproductive health and his work makes a substantial and diverse impact on clinical practice, service quality, and health policy internationally.
Dr. Hayter has published 174 scholarly papers and is a recognized expert in qualitative research. His paper on sampling in qualitative studies has been cited 762 times. He links his passion for research mentorship through his publications. For example, his chapter in the popular book on
Academic Writing for Nurses focuses on publishing papers from dissertations and theses. Dr. Hayter has delivered more than 150 invited keynote addresses, conference papers, seminars, and masterclasses to audiences in Australia, China, Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the United States.
OiSaeng Hong, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAAOHN, is a Professor and the Director of the PhD program at the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing in San Francisco, California, USA.
Dr. Hong is an internationally recognized expert in occupational and environmental health through stellar multidisciplinary intervention research to prevent occupational disease and injuries, as well as health promotion and risk reduction in underserved racial/ethnic minority populations. Her worksite-based participatory intervention research adapts the concept of tailoring to provide information most relevant to individual workers and incorporates mobile technology applications for wide dissemination.
She is also a member of the Executive Board for the Northern California Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health.
Rebecca Schnall, PhD, MPH, RN-BC, FAAN, isthe Mary Dickey Lindsay Professor of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in Nursing at Columbia University in New York, New York, USA.
With a team of nurse scientists, HIV clinicians, biostatisticians, and trainees, Dr. Schnall leads studies that draw on her expertise in nursing, informatics, and public health. Her independent research program focuses on understanding the information needs of vulnerable patient populations and developing informatics tools to promote health and prevent disease. Her program of research seeks to reduce health disparities for persons from underserved communities and more specifically those living with and at risk for HIV. Her research is characterized by its solid theoretical foundations and rigorous and innovative mixed-methods studies that have resulted in a greater understanding of the information needs of consumers/patients, serving as the foundation for the design of web-based and mobile applications with demonstrated impact.
Dr. Schnall's interdisciplinary work includes collaborations with colleagues across the US and internationally in the fields of infectious diseases, social work, American Indian studies, sociomedical sciences, health policy, epidemiology, biomedical informatics, chemistry, psychiatry, emergency medicine, adolescent medicine, and pediatrics.
In addition to her research efforts, Dr. Schnall mentors all levels of students at Columbia Nursing as well as master's in public health students, epidemiology post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty in nursing, public health, and medicine. Through her extensive mentoring activities, she is helping to develop the next generation of nursing leaders.
Yu-Ping Chang, PhD, RN, FGSA, FIAAN, FAAN, is the Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Endowed Professor; Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship; and Division Chair for Family, Community, and Health Systems Sciences at the University of Buffalo School of Nursing in Buffalo, New York, USA.
Dr. Chang's research advances the science in some of today's most pressing healthcare topics, such as health inequities, opioid addictions, and mental health. She has utilized technological solutions and data science approaches in conjunction with nursing innovations to address and improve health outcomes. Her current research areas include promoting high-value, integrated behavioral health and primary care services for underserved populations, using telehealth technology to address behavioral health in primary care, and using wireless innovation such as mobile apps to improve health and well-being for underserved populations.
She also focuses on developing and testing primary care-based behavioral interventions to reduce opioid use disorder in older adults, family caregiving for people with dementia from home care to institutional care, using community engagement strategies to establish community-academic partnerships to promote mental health, and creating innovative inter-professional educational modules for behavioral health delivery designed to train nursing and behavioral health professionals. Through her work, she hopes to strengthen the behavioral health workforce and increase access to behavioral health services, especially for disadvantaged and underserved populations.
Linda Chlan, PhD, RN, ATSF, FAAN, is the Associate Dean for Nursing Research and Professor of Nursing, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
Dr. Chlan received her Bachelor of Arts in Nursing from the College of St. Scholastica, and her Master of Science and PhD from the University of Minnesota. She completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the College of Nursing, University of Iowa, training in nursing interventions, outcomes, and effectiveness research.
Dr. Chlan's sustained program of research over the past 25 years is focused on developing and testing novel symptom management interventions for critically ill patients receiving mechanical ventilatory support and attendance post-ICU outcomes.
Lorraine Evangelista, PhD, RN, CNS, FAHA, FAAN, is the Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, USA.
A nurse researcher who is highly respected for her expertise in cardiovascular nursing, she has designed and tested effective interventions, using cutting-edge technology and adapting the concept of tailoring to provide the information most relevant to patients who struggle with this debilitating condition. Her research focuses on the biobehavioral, psychosocial, and biological aspects that impact psychological well-being, functional health, quality of life, and clinical outcomes in adults diagnosed with chronic heart failure
Dr. Evangelista was the first researcher to test the effect of a home-based walking program, particularly meaningful in this time of a pandemic, on death and hospitalization.
Greer Glazer, PhD, RN, CNP, FAAN, is Dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing and Associate Vice President for Health Affairs at UC in Cincinnati, OH, USA. She previously served as dean and professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston College of Nursing and director of parent-child nursing and professor at Kent State University.
Dr. Glazer combines teaching, research, practice, community service, and policy work. She has transformed nursing education and influenced hundreds of thousands of nurses through new admission processes, innovative pedagogy, and modern learning environments. She has taught undergraduate and graduate-level students and developed new programs at public and private universities and colleges large and small. To date, she's been responsible for more than 100 publications and 220 presentations, in addition to abstracts and contributions to newspapers, radio, and television. She co-authored the book Nursing Leadership from the Outside In and is the co-founder and legislative editor of the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing (OJIN).
She was a 1998 Fulbright Scholar in Israel, RWJ Executive Nurse Fellow, Chair of the American Nurses Association Political Action Committee, recipient of NLN Mary Adelaide Nutting Award for Outstanding Leadership in Nursing Education Award, recipient of the 2018 American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Diversity, Inclusion and Sustainability in Nursing Education Lectureship Award, recipient of the 2019 AACN Innovations in Professional Nursing Education Award, recipient of the 2019 AACN Exemplary Academic-Practice Partnership Award, and member of the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 Committee. Her research focuses on academic service partnerships, domestic violence, and women's health.
Ruth Tappen, EdD, RN, FAAN is the Christine E. Lynn Eminent Scholar and Professor in the College of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, USA.
Dr. Tappen began her nursing career as a staff nurse on adult medical, surgical, neurological, and orthopedic units and her teaching career at Mt. St. Mary College in Newburgh, New York, followed by a move to Florida where she became the Patient Education Coordinator at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital before joining the faculty at the University of Miami, where she developed a master’s program in Community Health Nursing, directed the PhD in Nursing program, served as Interim Dean and received her first two grants, from Sigma and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. she received a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona College of Nursing in Tucson, where she studied instrument development, conducted research on the expression of emotion in individuals with Alzheimer's disease and defined two primary lines of research: care transitions and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
She has received funding from the Administration on Aging, Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, National Institute on Nursing Research, Retirement Research Foundation, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, among other organizations. She currently has funding from the Florida Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer's Disease Initiative for a study called Fit2Drive and from the National Institute on Aging for In-Vehicle Sensors to Detect Cognitive Change in Older Adults.
