TAE to sponsor Research Days keynote
“Personal Health Data Mining: The Empowered Patient” will be the topic of this year’s Research Days keynote at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, in Watters Theater. A host of the PBS series NOVA Wonders, Talithia Williams is a groundbreaking professor and popular TED speaker. She will talk about monitoring your personal health data through everyday technologies and high-tech wearables. Williams believes empowered patients sharing this information with their healthcare providers can enhance patient outcomes. Williams, the first black woman to achieve tenure at Harvey Mudd College, is a passionate STEM/STEAM advocate. The talk is sponsored by the Transdisciplinary Area of Excellence in Health Sciences, Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and McNair Scholars Program.
Lyme research conference held at binghamton
Nearly 60 researchers from Binghamton, Cornell and SUNY Upstate Medical universities, and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry gathered in January for a conference. The sole topic: Lyme disease diagnostics for the sixth most common reportable disease in the nation and the most prevalent tick-borne disease. Hosted at Binghamton University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the conference highlighted not just ongoing research, but the many collaborations between the schools. Read more about the working group meeting.
Doctoral students earn national research awards
Two doctoral students in behavioral neuroscience have received prestigious NIH National Research Service Awards from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The grants — each about $60,000 — will enable Siara Rouzer and Andrew Vore to support their dissertation research, fund travel, equipment and supplies, and take part in professional development. Read more about their work.
Study may aid in early Alzheimer’s diagnosis
A Binghamton graduate student has found new ways for doctors to detect Alzheimer’s before symptoms set in. Wenna Duan, a doctoral student in computer science, uses magnetization transfer rate (MTR) as a visual biomarker for brain tissue health. MTR is a measurement most commonly used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) when looking at the brain. An MRI shoots energy into tissue cells, disorienting them, and then is turned off. MTR measures the amount of time the tissue cells take to dissipate the energy and reorient themselves. Read more about her work with Weiying Dai, an assistant professor of computer science.
Federal grants to support diabetes research
Sha Jin, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, approaches diabetes research from several different angles. Three federal grants totaling nearly $1.2 million will aid her and her team in that quest. The largest, a $450,479 grant from the National Institutes of Health, will support research on improving the production of islet-like organoids in three-dimensional scaffolds. Read more about Jin’s diabetes research.
Nursing practice informs researcher’s work
As a nurse and as a researcher, Melissa Sutherland focuses on how best to help her patients. Her scholarly work focuses on interpersonal violence, its impact on young women and factors that perpetuate intimate partner violence. She has studied reproductive coercion — when a partner impairs a woman’s ability to access contraceptives or make reproductive decisions — and how it impacts college-age women. Her most recent and ongoing studies center on college health and screening. Read more about Sutherland’s research.
