Week of July 19

This week, the SURF students met with Dr. Harry Levine who discussed his work in developing assays for the study of Alzheimer's Disease and the role of misfolded proteins in disease progression.  He also talked about how his career began as a scientist in industry and advised us to be open to different opportunities.

The SURES students met with Colleen Kaelin of the Bluegrass Sierra Club.  She talked about her career as an epidemiologist and developing a tracking network called EnviroHealthLink.  She also described her current work with the Sierra Club evaluating the impact of climate change on human health.

On Thursday, we watched the movie Erin Brockovich and discussed what the movie got right about environmental health concerns and other topics.
  The movie is based on an inspiring true story.  You can read more about Erin here.

Our week of July 9

      On Monday, we joined the  UK Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences (UK-CARES)  COMPASS Science Communications Training. COMPASS is a pioneer in the practice of science communication, and their coaches help scientists build the knowledge, skills, and networks they need to effectively engage in public discourse about the environment.  We learned  about using a message box as a tool for finding the right words to say and honed our skills in giving a “3-minute elevator” talk.

     Then  on Tuesday, the SURES participants will met with Dr. Olga Tsyusko-Unrine.  She talked about her journey from being a student in Ukraine to a professor at the Univesity of Kentucky.  She also described her work using c.elegans to study the toxicity of nanoparticles-https://pss.ca.uky.edu/person/olga-tsyusko.

For our Thursday activity, we joined Dr. Blake Newton who taught us about field work and showed us how to assess the health of a stream and assess the status of our ladybug population.  We rewarded our scientific efforts with ice cream at Crank and Boom.

One of our SURES participants, Stephanie, joined the UK Superfund trainees for a science and policy institute event in Washington, D.C.