Congratulations to Epidemiology graduate group doctoral student Thomas Stopka, who was a finalist for the Reuel A. Stallones Student Prize, a nationally recognized epidemiology award.

Last June Stopka was honored at the 2011 North American Congress of Epidemiology, held in Montreal, Canada. He was presented with an Honorable Mention for his paper, "Demographic, Risk and Spatial Factors Associated with Over-The-Counter Syringe Purchase among Injection Drug Users."

"We believe this is the first time a UC Davis student has been a finalist for a national award in epidemiology," says Associate Professor Kathy DeRiemer. "Tom is an outstanding representative of the UC Davis School of Medicine and the graduate programs at UC Davis, especially the graduate group in Epidemiology."

Tom organized a team of co-investigators from various institutions to conduct the study and co-author the paper: UC Davis graduate group in Epidemiology; UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences; Urban Health Program, Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International, San Francisco; UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine; and UC San Francisco Department of Family and Community Medicine.