Week of July 22nd

On Monday, the SURF participants talked with Dr. Kendra Staggs, who is a Postdoctoral Scholar in Dept. Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences.  Dr. Staggs told us about her career journey, her research on sleep, cognition and aging, her fellowship in technology transfer and her internship as a data manager for startups at the University of Kentucky.  The SURES participants talked with Dr. Gang Chen who is an Associate Professor the Dept. Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences.  Dr. Chen  told us about his career journey and his research on ethanol neurotoxicity and carcinogenesis induced by arsenic and chromium.

For our Thursday activity, we first joined Dr. Pete Mirabito and the Kentucky Biomedical Research Infrastructure Students (KBRIN) and watched the documentary called The Human Element.  We then discussed the implications of this movie and some of the lessons learned about communicating human health issues associated with climate change.  Dr. Mirabito shared a podcast that was also very informative (Listen to Facts Aren't Enough from Hidden Brain in Podcasts).

After all of that serious stuff-we then turned on the creative side of our brains by tie-dying our labcoats and painting our science projects. 

Week of July 15

This week, the SURF student talked to with Dr. John Littleton (MD/PhD) who is the founder of Naprogenix.  Check out his web site to learn more the approaches he uses to identify new medicine from natural products.  The SURES students chatted with  Dr.Brett Spear who studies liver gene expression and is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the Integrated Biomedical Science program for the College of Medicine.    Check out his web site to learn more http://microbiology.med.uky.edu/users/bspear#profileTab3

For our Thursday activity, we learned about entomology, by taking a tour of several entomology laboratories in the College of Agriculture, Food and the Environment.  Laura Rosenwald was our tour guide (https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/person/laura-rosenwald).  After the tour, we met with Dr. Carmen Agouridis who will tell us about environmental engineering, water resources and climate change.  You can read more about Dr. Agouridis here.   She also has a  very interesting podcast--https://kyh2o.podbean.com/. 

Since climate change is predicted to bring about an increase in vector and water-borne diseases as described in the attached report-this type of knowledge will be invaluable for us as we start to envision solutions.

Our training with COMPASS

On July 11, we joined the UK CARES and other scientists at the University of Kentucky to work on our communication skills with our COMPASS workshop facilitator, Heather Maddix.  We learned how to create a message box and give 3 min elevator speeches by practices and providing each other with constructive feedback. 

Discussions this week with the SURF participants involved learning about detecting substances like cannabinoids in serum and urine from Erin Crum.  The SURES participants learned about graduate school and the study of kidney physiology from the Dean of the Graduate School, Brian Jackson.

Hiking the Red River Gorge

Our hike was wet-but gave us a new appreciating of "Forest Bathing".  Great conversations, expansive views and of course at the end of the hike...terrific pizza was enjoyed.