| Awards and Honors - Apr. 2013 |
Sarah Weber, an undergraduate student in the lab of
Luis Populin, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, has won a 2013-2014 Wisconsin Hilldale Undegraduate Research Fellowship.
This is a campus-wide undergraduate research competition. The title of her project is "Effect of Methylphenidate on Impulsivity and Temporal Discounting".
Congratulations!
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| Research News - Mar. 2013 |
For the first time, scientists have transplanted neural cells derived from a monkey's skin into its brain and
watched the cells develop into several types of mature brain cells, according to the authors of a new study in Cell Reports.
After six months, the cells looked entirely normal, and were only detectable because they initially were tagged with a fluorescent protein.
And since the skin cells were not "foreign" tissue, there were no signs of immune rejection - potentially a major problem with cell transplants.
"When you look at the brain, you cannot tell that it is a graft," says senior author Su-Chun Zhang, Professor of Neuroscience.
"Structurally the host brain looks like a normal brain; the graft can only be seen under the fluorescent microscope."
Read more...
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| Research News - Jan 2013 |
New research in the laboratory of Zhen Huang, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience,
shows how developing neural cells control the growth of blood vessels.
Although it makes intuitive sense that blood vessel development should be guided by neuronal development in some fashion, Huang spent years making sure he wasn't being mislead by his experiment.
Now, he's satisfied himself, and his scientific reviewers, and the journal PLOS Biology has just published his study.
For more information:
Article at Univ of Wisconsin News
PLOS Biology article
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| New Year Baby - Jan 2013 |
Dinesh Joshi, Research Associate in the lab of Prof. Bill Chiu,
and his wife Anchal Gusain are the proud parents of the newest member of the Neuroscience community.
Shreyash Joshi was born in the early morning of Jan. 1, 2013, the first baby born at Madison's Meriter Hospital for the new year. He was featured in a news story on WKOW-TV
(click here for news story).
Congratulations!
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| Transitions - Dec 2012 |
It is with mixed emotions that we announce the retirement of John Harting,
UWSMPH and Medical Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Neuroscience,
effective December 31, 2012. John has been in the Departments of Anatomy/Neuroscience for 39 years and has made
major contributions to research (he is one of the world's experts on the neuroanatomy of the superior colliculus),
teaching (he has won numerous teaching awards in the Medical School) and administration (he served as the chair of Anatomy for 29 years).
To read a brief summary of John's distinguished career, please click here.
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| Faculty News - Aug 2012 |
Dan Uhlrich, Professor of Neuroscience, has been appointed Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Policy.
In his new role, Uhlrich will oversee many facets of research policy on campus, including responsible conduct of research, animal research and the use of human subjects.
For more information please click here.
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| Awards and Honors - May 2012 |
Cynthia Czajkowski, Professor of Neuroscience, has been awarded
a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorship, which recognizes professors whose distinguished scholarship has advanced the confines of knowledge,
and whose excellence has also included teaching and service. The recipient receives a $75,000 flexible research award. Congratulations!
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| Spinal cord symposium - May 2012 |
Lea Ziskind-Conhaim, Professor of Neuroscience, organized the fourth Biennial spinal cord symposium
"Cellular and Networks Functions in the Spinal cord." More than 120 neuroscientists from 12 countries participated in the 3 days meeting
that was held in Madison on May 22-25, 2012. For more information please visit:
http://conferencing.uwex.edu/conferences/SpinalConference2012/index.cfm
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| Awards and Honors - Apr. 2012 |
Dan Geisler, Professor Emeritus, was awarded the Basic Sciences Emeritus Faculty Award by the
Wisconsin Medical Alumni Association at their annual banquet held in Madison on Apr. 27, 2012.
The citation reads:
"This award is given to a basic scientist who demonstrates long and effective service to the UW School of Medicine
and Public Health in teaching and/or research or noteworthy administration, including program development."
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| Awards and Honors - Apr. 2012 |
June Dahl, Professor of Neuroscience, was recently awarded an honorary degree from her alma mater, Macalester College in St. Paul. It wil be presented at their commencement ceremony on May 12. She also received the Board of Directors Award of Honor from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. It is given to non-pharmacists "who have made significant contributions to the health field."
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| Awards and Honors - Apr. 2012 |
Robert Fettiplace, Professor of Neuroscience, has been elected to be a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies. Congratulations Robert !!
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Apr. 2012 |
Kevin Strang, Faculty Associate, Neuroscience, has been named as one of the nation's "300 Best Professors" in a guidebook
compiled by The Princeton Review and ratemyprofessors.com.
"One cannot page through this book without feeling tremendous respect for the powerful ways these teachers are enriching their students' lives, their colleges, and ultimately our future as a society," says Robert Franek, senior vice president/publisher at The Princeton Review.
Congratulations Kevin !!
Read more...
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| Faculty News - Apr. 2012 |
Su-Chun Zhang, Professor of Neuroscience, and
Xinyu Zhao, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, were featured
participants at the seventh annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium held April 11, 2012, at the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute in Fitchburg, just south of Madison.
Titled "Neural Stem Cells: Generation and Regeneration", the symposium focused on the mechanisms of neural development, modeling neural disorders, and harnessing the potential of neural regeneration.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Apr. 2012 |
Andrew Lokuta, Assoc Faculty Associate, Neuroscience, has been awarded the Chancellor's Hilldale Award for Excellence in Teaching. Congratulations to Drew for this distinguished honor!!
Read more...
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| Research News - Mar. 2012 |
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A special type of brain cell forged from stem cells could help restore the muscle coordination deficits that cause the uncontrollable spasms characteristic of Huntington's disease.
"This is really something unexpected," says Su-Chun Zhang, Professor of Neuroscience and the senior author of the new study, which showed that locomotion could be restored in mice with a Huntington's-like condition.
Zhang is an expert at making different types of brain cells from human embryonic or induced pluripotent stem cells.
In the new study, his group focused on what are known as GABA neurons, cells whose degradation is responsible for disruption
of a key neural circuit and loss of motor function in Huntington's patients.
GABA neurons, Zhang explains, produce a key neurotransmitter, a chemical that helps underpin the communication network in the brain that coordinates movement.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Mar. 2012 |
Ed Chapman, Professor of Neuroscience, has been named as one of the winners of this year's Kellett Mid-Career Award.
The Kellett award, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), recognizes outstanding mid-career faculty members who are five to 20 years past the first promotion to a tenured position. Each winner, chosen by a Graduate School committee, receives a $60,000 flexible research award.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Feb. 2012 |
Tom Yin, Professor and Interim Chair, Neuroscience, and Eric Young, Johns Hopkins,
were honored with a special symposium celebrating their research in auditory neuroscience at the
recent annual meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. The symposium was titled "The Yin and Young of sound localization".
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| Awards and Honors - Feb. 2012 |
Congratulations to Donata Oertel for her nomination and selection to present a Society for Neuroscience Special Lecture this coming Fall! A very special recognition for a special researcher!!
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| Research News - Feb. 2012 |
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Stem Cell research in the lab of Su-Chun Zhang, Professor of Neuroscience, was featured in a recent article about the 45'th anniversary of the Waisman Center.
First tamed in 1998, embryonic stem cells - the blank slate cells that arise in early development and go on to form all 220 tissues in the human body - have since been directed in the lab dish by Prof. Zhang to become some of the most fundamental building blocks of the brain.
Scientists can now make neurons and astrocytes with relative ease, and they're exploring the intricate workings of those cells and how they might be used clinically to alleviate conditions such as Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Feb. 2012 |
Baron Chanda and Erik Dent have both won the Vilas Associate Award for 2012 and 2013 from the University of Wisconsin Graduate School.
The award provides flexible research funding for each of the two years.
Congratulations!
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| Research News - Dec. 2011 |
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Research in the lab of Ed Chapman, Professor of Neuroscience, provides insight into how working memory holds a piece of information - or thoughts linger, on the cellular level .
They found the molecular sensor that controls a little-understood phase of nerve cell communication that keeps a message alive well after it has been delivered.
When one nerve cell sends a signal to another at a synapse, most of the communication takes place instantaneously, with an electrical impulse causing calcium in the sending cell to release a shot of neurotransmitter into the receiving cell. The much-studied action, which makes up the bulk of activity between communicating nerve cells, ends in milliseconds.
But a second, slower phase often follows, in which the signal hangs on such that residual levels of calcium continue to drive the release of neurotransmitters over a much longer period-seconds. Overlooked for a long time, this slow phase of nerve cell communication (also called asynchronous) is now clearly in the spotlight following the Wisconsin studies.
Read more...
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| Research News - Oct. 2011 |
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Robert Fettiplace, Professor of Neuroscience, and his colleagues
have recently made observations that go a long way toward explaining how the mammalian cochlea can be so sharply tuned.
This work shows how force generated by the prestin motors in outer hair cells can locally amplify the motion of the
basilar membrane with every cycle of the sound, even at the high frequencies that mammals hear.
The key to the puzzle is that outer hair cells rest at depolarized potentials at which voltage-gated potassium channels are strongly activated.
This elegant and ground breaking work was published by Stuart L. Johnson, Maryline Beurg, Walter Marcotti, and Robert Fettiplace,
in Neuron "Prestin-Driven Cochlear Amplification is Not Limited by the Outer Hair Cell Membrane Time Constant" 70:1143-1154, 2011.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Oct. 2011 |
Meyer Jackson, Professor of Neuroscience, has been named the winner of the Biophysical Society's 2012 Kenneth S. Cole Award.
Jackson is a nationally recognized expert on the workings of synapses, junctures where communication between nerve cells takes place. His group studies how neurotransmitter-filled vesicles inside synapses fuse with the cell membrane and how the entry of calcium triggers membrane fusion.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Sep. 2011 |
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Erik Dent has won the 24th Annual Kreig Cortical Explorer Award from the Cajal Club, an international society focused on the study of the cerebral cortex.
The award will be presented at the annual Cajal Club dinner at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting on November 13, 2011 in Washington, DC.
Read more...
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| Awards and Honors - Aug. 2011 |
Congratulations to Ed Chapman for having his Howard Hughes Investigator status renewed for another term.
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| Awards and Honors - July 2011 |
John Harting Wins Sixth 2011 Medical Alumni Distinguished Award for Basic Sciences Teaching.
This award recognizes the most distinguished basic science teacher in the first two years of medical school
as identified by second-year medical students.
John is no stranger to teaching related awards, having received more than 30 in his career.
He received his first Medical Alumni Teaching Award in 1979 and currently holds the sole endowed chair as the
UW Medical School Alumni Association Distinguished Teaching Professor.
John has been teaching UW medical, occupational and physical therapy, and physician assistant student for some 38 years.
In addition to teaching, he directed a basic science research program for decades and served as chair of the Department of Anatomy for almost 29 years.
John took the opportunity at the award ceremony to give the $500 award check to Ian Stormont,
a second year medical student who was president of MEDIC (Medical Information Center).
This group's goals are to improve the health of an underserved population and give medical and other health care students what is literally a hands-on learning opportunity.
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| Awards and Honors - July 2011 |
Dr. Edward Bersu, Professor of Neuroscience,
was voted by 2011 graduating class of medical students to participate in their Investiture (hooding) at the UWMSPH graduation ceremony on May, 2011.
This was the third time Ed has received this honor.
He is also the recipient of numerous other medical and University teaching awards, including the most prestigious
University Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991 and the Medical Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.
Ed is one of the most respected teachers on the UW campus, teaching not only medical students but all allied health students.
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| Awards and Honors - July 2011 |
Dr. Karen Krabbenhoft , Senior Lecturer, Department of Neuroscience,
was awarded the Preclinical Teaching Award given by the graduating class at their match Day on March 17, 2011.
Karen is known as one of he most effective educators on the UW campus and has won numerous teaching awards,
including the Medical Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007 and the honor of participating in the Investiture/hooding ceremony in 2000 and 2009.
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| Research News - June 2011 |
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Research conducted by Sam Kwon, graduate student, and Ed Chapman, Professor of Neuroscience,
has shown that synaptophysin controls the replacement of the constantly needed sacs, also known as vesicles.
The study, appearing in the current issue of the journal Neuron [PDF], may lead to future drugs that could restore normalcy when vesicles are not utilized efficiently.
It may help explain why people with synaptophysin mutations may have mental retardation.
"It will take more studies to directly link how this cycling defect leads to mental retardation, but we now have a good starting point," Kwon says.
Scientists could also now begin to screen for molecules that could override the defect and restore normal rates of endocytosis, adds Chapman.
Read more...
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| Research News - May 2011 |
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A group led by Su-Chun Zhang, Professor of Neuroscience, reports it has been able
to direct embryonic and induced human stem cells to become astrocytes in the lab dish.
This opens a new avenue to more fully understanding the functional roles of the brain's most
commonplace cell, as well as its involvement in a host of central nervous system
disorders ranging from headaches to dementia...
Read more...
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| Research News - Feb. 2010 |
A UW team led by Baron Chanda,
Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, has made a discovery important to the millions of people who are on common medications for heart and neurological diseases
The discovery, published in the Jan. 31, 2010 issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, relates to ion channels, key molecular players that generate and control electrical signals critical for heart,
brain and other types of cells to do their jobs. If anything goes wrong in the process, called excitability,
potentially deadly heartbeat abnormalities and epilepsies may arise.
The researchers have shown how the structure that couples the two main parts of sodium ion channels may allow them to communicate.
Read more...
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