News

Jennifer Stripay, NSC PH.D. Candidate

Congratulations to NGP student Jennifer Stripay from the Mark Noble Lab, who has won the Grand Prize at the recent Wilmot Cancer Institute's 19^th Annual Scientific Symposium.

Well done Jennifer!

Douglas Portman will start his term as President of the Chapter January 1^st, 2015.
Thank you for everyone who participated in the first presidential elections.
Thank you Krystel for serving as the first President and for reviving the Chapter.

Ben Hayden, Ph.D.

Recent studies have indicated that the color red tends to increase human attraction toward others, feelings of jealousy, and reaction times. New research by Ben Hayden, assistant professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, shows that female monkeys also respond to the color red, suggesting that biology, rather than culture, may play a fundamental role in red responses.

Read more about Red Effects...

Douglas Portman, Ph.D.

Males can suppress their hunger in order to focus on finding a mate, a new scientific study of a species of worm has shown.

The study, conducted by Douglas Portman at the University of Rochester Medical Center, points to how subtle changes in the brain's circuitry dictate differences in behaviour between males and females.

David Knill

David C. Knill, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and associate director of the Center for Visual Science, passed away suddenly on October 6^th at the age of 53.

The University has more information in their newscenter.

The Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences has created a memorial website. From this site, you can post tributes or stories about Dave and invite friends and colleagues to post their own contributions.

Alumna, Maria Diehl, and NGP faculty, Lizabeth Romanski, published a paper in August 2014 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience on Responses of Prefrontal Multisensory Neurons to Mismatching Faces and Vocalizations.

Michele Saul, PhD

Dr. Michele Saul has accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology beginning this Fall. Michele was a popular instructor in ANA 258 here at the UR, where she worked with Dr. Martha Johnson-Gdowski. In addition to her new faculty position, she will continue part-time as a Postdoctoral student in our Fudge lab developing her studies on adolescent stress models in rodents.

Make sure to congratulate her!!

Three first year NGP students received Convocation Awards this year.

• Laura Duclos was awarded the Graduate Alumni Fellowship Award
• Rianne Stowell received the Merritt & Marjorie Cleveland Fellowship Award
• Jessica Hogestyn received the Irving Spar Fellowship Award

Congratulations to All!

Congratulations to this year's Award Recipients

• Grayson Sipe won a travel award from the Schmitt Program in Integrative Brain Research to attend the EMBL Conference, Microglia: Guardians of the Brain, held on 26-29 March 2014 in Heidelberg, Germany.
• Heather Natola won a travel award from the Schmitt Program in Integrative Brain Research to attend the 45^th annual American Society of Neurochemistry meeting in Long Beach, CA, March 8-12, 2014.
• Adrianne Chesser received a travel award to attend the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on July 12-17, 2014 where she presented a poster.
• Julianne Feola received a travel award from Graduate Women in Science to attend the Gordon Research Conference in Italy from June 29 - July 4,2014.
• Ryan Dawes was awarded a Trainee Scholar Award from the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.

William E. O'Neill, PhD

After more than 35 years of service to URMC, Bill has retired to devote more time to personal endeavors. He will remain deeply involved in the studies of his current students who appreciate his wealth of expertise.

Bill was Associate Professor in both the Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy at the Medical Center and for Brain/Cognitive Sciences on the River Campus. He will be deeply missed.

Make sure to congratulate him when you see him.

Gary D. Paige, M.D., Ph.D., is stepping down after 16 years of service as chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy. M. Kerry O’Banion, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as interim chair effective July 1, 2014 while a national search for a permanent chair is conducted.

Renee M. Miller, Ph.D. earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester. Her current research is focused on sex differences in behavioral choices. She is a Lecturer in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences where she teaches several neuroscience courses to undergraduates. Dr. Miller is an avid fantasy player, enjoying seasonal as well as daily fantasy NFL, NBA, and MLB. Recently, Dr. Miller published a book entitled Cognitive Bias in Fantasy Sports: Is Your Brain Sabotaging Your Team?

Richard Aslin, the William R. Kenan Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging, was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences at its 151st annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Ryan Dawes, a third year NGP student in Dr. Ed Brown's lab was awarded a Trainee Award from the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.

Congratulations to NGP graduate student Julianne Feola who won a travel award from Graduate Women in Science to attend the Gordon Research Conference in Italy from June 29 – July 4, 2014.

Vision scientist David Williams, the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics, Dean for Research in Arts, Sciences & Engineering, and Director of the Center for Visual Science, has been named a member of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Grayson Sipe, a 4^thNGP student in Dr. Ania Majewska's lab and Heather Natola, a second-year student in Dr. Christoph Pröschel and Margot Mayer-Pröschel labs won the travel awards. Grayson used this award to attend the EMBL Conference: Microglia: Guardians of the Brain, March 26-29, 2014, held in Berlin, Germany, and Heather used it to travel to the 45^th annual American Society of Neurochemistry meeting in Long Beach, CA, March 8-12, 2014

Study will explore intracellular trafficking

A grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will provide Sanford Research’s Jill Weimer, PhD, with $1.75 million over five years to study intracellular trafficking in neurological disorders such as the rare pediatric Batten disease.

By Kyle Koster, Public Relations Chair

Friday, March 21 was a bright day for the Medical Scientist Training Program. As the seconds ticked closer to noon, the buzz in Helen Wood Hall escalated, only to be replaced by a sudden silence as MSTP and medical students tore open envelopes revealing the programs to which they matched for residency training. This year was a particularly interesting and successful year for the MSTP. Students matched to top choices across the country; four MSTP students matched to West Coast programs and three to East Coast programs, with one student remaining in Rochester and another on to New Mexico. The choice of specialties was similarly broad, with four students matching into surgical specialties, two students into internal medicine, and three into the behavioral sciences.

This May, the program graduates nine students, all of whom matched on Friday. The MSTP congratulates its Class of 2014 with a graduation brunch at Mario's on April 27.

MSTP MATCH LIST 2014

Melisa Carrasco

Univ. of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD
Pediatrics-Preliminary/Child Neurology

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD
Child Neurology

Joanna Olsen

Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR
Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine

Scott Peslak

Hospital of the U. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Internal Medicine--ABIM Research Track

Phillip Rappold

University of Rochester Medical Center, NY
Surgery-Preliminary/Urology

Danny Rogers

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
Pediatrics-Preliminary/Child Neurology

Mercedes Szpunar

University of California, San Diego Medical Center, CA
Psychiatry--Research Track

Edward Vuong

North Shore-LIJ Health System, Manhasset, NY
Internal Medicine

Ethan Winkler

University of California, San Francisco, CA
Neurological Surgery

Michael Wu

University of California, San Francisco, CA
Anesthesiology--Research Track

Associate Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Center for Visual Science, Department of Ophthalmology, University Of Rochester, NY, USA

Duje Tadin is the 2014 winner of the Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award.

Trained at Vanderbilt, Duje Tadin was awarded the PhD. in Psychology in 2004 under the supervision of Joe Lappin. After 3 years of post-doctoral work in Randolph Blake's lab, he took up a position at the University of Rochester, where he is currently an associate professor.

Duje's broad research goal is to elucidate neural mechanisms that lead to human visual experience. He seeks converging experimental evidence from a range of methods, including human psychophysics, computational modeling, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), neuroimaging, research on special populations, collaborations on primate neurophysiology, and adaptive optics to control retinal images.

Loisa Bennetto, director of the developmental neuropsychology lab in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, will present a talk on Understanding Autism at the next "Got Health?" event on Thursday, March 20. The free lecture will be held from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m. in the Rundel Auditorium at the Rochester Central Library, 115 South Ave. The talk is sponsored by the Center for Community Health in partnership with the Central Library.

Grayson Sipe, 4^th year Neuroscience Graduate Program student in Dr. Ania Majewska's lab was awarded NIH (NRSA) Individual Pre-doctoral Fellowship from NINDS. The title of his project is: Role of P2Y12 and Purinergic Signaling in Microglia-Mediated Synaptic Plasticity (2013-2016). Congrats Grayson!