Tara Vanderweyde wins the MED Dean’s Award
Hats off to Tara Vanderweyde who has received the 2013 MED Dean’s Award at Boston University Scholar’s Day 2013! Scholar’s Day was open to all graduate students currently engaged in research in a degree-granting program at Boston University. Tara, as well as her advisor, will receive an honorarium for her outstanding poster presentation.
Tara is a fourth-year graduate student in the Ph.D. Program in Biomolecular Pharmacology pursuing research in the Laboratory of Neurodegeneration under the mentorship of Dr. Benjamin Wolozin. Her research with cells, mice, and human tissue investigates the role of stress granules in normal aging as well as in Alzheimer’s Disease.
Congratulations, Tara!
Camron Bryant Receives 2013 IBANGS Outstanding Junior Faculty Travel Award
Congratulations to Dr. Camron Bryant on receiving the Outstanding Junior Faculty Travel Award for the 2013 International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society (IBANGS) in Leuven, Belgium. Dr. Bryant was selected to present his work at the special oral Awardee presentation session on May 21. In addition to a stipend to cover his travel expenses, Dr. Bryant’s work will be considered for inclusion in the peer-reviewed publication Genes, Brain and Behavior (G2B).
Please visit Dr. Bryant’s webpage for more information on his research.
Dr. Anurag Singh Receives OTD-HTS Ignition Award
Kudos to Anurag Singh, Ph.D., on being awarded the OTD-HTS Ignition Award for his proposal on “Identification of Subtype Selective Therapeutic Agents for Pancreatic Cancer.” This award covers the costs of HTS Core sevices for a Full and/or a Pilot HTS screen.
Dr. Singh is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Cancer Pharmacogenomics and member of The Cancer Center. For more information on Dr. Singh’s research, please visit his webpage .
Richard Wainford Receives 2013 APS Shih-Chun Wang Young Investigator Award
Congratulations to Richard Wainford, Ph.D. for being selected as the recipient of the American Physiological Society’s 2013 Shih-Chun Wang Young Investigator Award.
Established in 1998 in memory of Shih-Chun Wang, a renowned neuroscientist and pharmacology professor, this award recognizes an individual demonstrating outstanding promise in the field of central nervous system physiology. Dr. Wainford will be presented the award at the APS business meeting in April. The $4,000 cash award will support his research.
Please see Dr. Wainford’s faculty profile for more information on his research and the Laboratory of CardioRenal Research.
Casey Carmichael to Receive the 2013 Caroline tum Suden/Frances Hellebrandt Professional Opportunity Award from the American Physiological Association
Hats off to Casey Carmichael who has been chosen to receive the 2013 Caroline tum Suden/Frances Hellebrandt Professional Opportunity Award from the American Physiological Association! The award is one of three based on abstract submissions that are offered by the APS for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Casey was selected by the Women in Physiology Committee from 154 applicants and will be presented the award at the 2013 Experimental Biology meeting in Boston in April. Her abstract is entitled, “A role for Gai2 proteins in the acute neural control of blood pressure.”
Casey is a second-year graduate student in the Ph.D. Program in Biomolecular Pharmacology who is pursuing research in the Laboratory of Cardio-Renal Research under the mentorship of Richard D. Wainford, Ph.D. Her research is aimed at understanding the central neural aspects of blood pressure regulation in order to identify the pathophysiology and potential treatments for hypertension.
Dr. Richard Wainford to Receive the American Physiological Society Central Nervous System Section’s 2013 New Investigator Award
Congratulations to Richard D. Wainford, Ph.D., FAHA, on being selected to receive the American Physiological Society Central Nervous System Section’s 2013 New Investigator Award. This award is given to an outstanding investigator in the early stages of his/her career who has made meritorious contributions to the field of the study represented by the Central Nervous System Section. The award will be presented to him in April at the APS Central Nervous System Section’s reception at the 2013 Experimental Biology meeting in Boston.
Dr. Wainford is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and a member of The Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute. His research interests focus on the central neural control of fluid and electrolyte homeostasis and blood pressure regulation in both health and disease.
Stefan Yohe joins Bayer’s Berkeley site as a Process Development Engineer
Stefan Yohe, a graduate student working under the supervision of Dr. Mark J. Grinstaff in the Center for Nanoscience and Nanobiotechnology, recently completed the Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. degree and Biomolecular Pharmacology training program. In November he successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “Superhydrophobic Materials for Drug Delivery”. Stefan received multiple job offers from all over the country and ultimately decided to join Bayer’s Berkeley site as a Process Development Engineer working in the formulation of protein therapeutics.
In only 4.3 years as a graduate student at Boston University, Stefan completed two publications as first author and one as co-author, one paper in press as first author, and two submitted papers as first author.
In 2007 Stefan earned his undergraduate degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Penn State University. Before that, he was a member of the Boy Scouts of America for 14 years, completed his Eagle award at the age of eighteen, and was involved with the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega during college.
We wish Stefan all the best as he embarks on the next journey in his research career!
Matthew Whittaker, Ph.D., Pharmacology/ Toxicology Reviewer, US FDA
Dr. Matthew Whittaker completed his undergraduate studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA in 2000 with a B.A. in Biology. He joined the laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Boston University School of Medicine in 2003, where he studied in the Program in Biomedical Neuroscience under the mentorship of Dr. David Farb. His Ph.D. research centered on investigating the effects of neuroactive steroids on neurotransmitter release from isolated axon terminals (synaptosomes/synaptoneurosomes) derived from rat brain. The research project demonstrated that pregnenolone sulfate, at pM concentrations, enhances the release of [3H]dopamine, but not [14C]glutamate or [3H]GABA, from rat striatal synaptosomes via an NMDA receptor dependent mechanism. Dr. Whittaker was the recipient of the Henry I. Russek Student Achievement Award in 2009.
Following his Ph.D. thesis defense in 2009, Dr. Whittaker joined the laboratory of Dr. Jean Wrathall as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Here, his research interests shifted toward investigation of therapies for spinal cord injury. Working in collaboration with Acorda Therapeutics, Inc., the research found that administration of the neuregulin glial growth factor 2 (GGF2) improves long term functional recovery in both rat and mouse models of contusive spinal cord injury. This work led to the filing of a provisional patent application in 2010. Dr. Whittaker’s research was supported in part by a Craig H. Neilsen Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship Grant and he was also a co-investigator on a Department of Defense Spinal Cord Injury Research Program (SCIRP) grant.
Dr. Whittaker left the field of academic research in September, 2011 to accept a position as a Pharmacology/Toxicology Reviewer in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Rheumatology Products (DPARP) at the United States Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, MD. In this capacity, Dr. Whittaker works with teams of medical officers, chemists, statisticians, and clinical pharmacologists to critically review and evaluate the data submitted with Investigational New Drug applications (INDs), New Drug Applications (NDAs) and Biologics License Applications (BLAs). He was recently honored by having his abstract highlighted by the Society for Neuroscience as of special interest and for a press release to the media. He also serves on the Center for Drug Evaluation and Review (CDER) Neurotoxicology Subcommittee.
Richard Wainford Named International Society for Hypertension New Investigator for December
Congratulations to Dr. Richard Wainford on being selected as the International Society for Hypertension’s December 2012 New Investigator. Richard recently received recognition for presenting the Best Poster at the 2nd International Society for Hypertension New Investigators Symposium.
Dr. Wainford is an assistant professor in the Departments of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics and Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, and the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute. For more information on Dr. Wainford and his research, please see his faculty profile.
Shelley J. Russek, Ph.D. Participates in Transcriptomics: Assessing Genomic Networks in Normal and Diseased Brains Short Course at 2012 SfN Annual Meeting
Congratulations to Dr. Shelley J. Russek on her participation in “Transcriptomics: Assessing Genomic Networks in Normal and Diseased Brains” Short Course #1 at the 2012 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting on October 12, 2012 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Russek co-chaired the Group 2 Breakout Session on “RNA-seq Insights into Complex Diseases.”
Dr. Russek is a Professor of Pharmacology, Director of the Laboratory for Translational Epilepsy and Director of the Graduate Program for Neuroscience at Boston University. She received her Ph.D. from Boston University School of Medicine.
For more information on Dr. Russek and research, please see her faculty profile .
