Rochester Bridges to the Doctorate - World of Wonder

Dr. Robert Pollard comes to NTID from University of Rochester’s School of Medicine where he is a professor of psychiatry and serves as founder and director of the Department of Psychiatry’s Deaf Wellness Center. His work has been recognized with many national and international awards and honors, and he has been a principal investigator on more than 50 federal, foundation, regional and local grants, totaling more than $6 million. He has published more than 90 articles and book chapters and has produced 15 films in American Sign Language.

Pollard’s research interests include psychopathology, psychological testing, sign language interpreting, forensic evaluation, intimate partner violence, and public health issues affecting the deaf population. He is active in several national organizations, including the American Psychological Association where he founded a special interest section on deafness.

Dr. Craig Morrell earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1995. He then graduated from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in 2000 before beginning a comparative pathology fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. While at Hopkins Dr. Morrell concurrently completed a PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Charles Lowenstein in 2005 where he investigated molecular mechanisms of nitric oxide inhibition of platelet degranulation and received a K08 award. Dr. Morrell then established his own independent laboratory in the Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology at Hopkins from 2005-2009, before moving to the University of Rochester’s Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute. His current research interests include mechanisms of glutamate regulation of platelet activation and how platelets modulate and drive the immune response using transplant rejection and cerebral malaria models.

Research: Platelets have two major functions: homeostasis/thrombosis and an immune regulatory function. In our lab we actively study both important platelet functions. Our lab is also actively studying the role of platelets in cerebral malaria. Cerebral malaria is a complication of severe malaria, primarily in children, that has a vascular inflammation based pathogenesis. Using the mouse model we have established an important role for platelets and the platelet derived chemokine Platelet Factor 4 (PF4/CXCL4) in the development of experimental cerebral malaria. We are now dissecting the molecular signaling events between platelets and monocytes that promote the cerebral immune response. We are also exploring the role of platelets in stimulating the acute phase response very early in infection and how this may assist in clearing infected red blood cells.

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/people/27314975-craig-morrell

Dr. Edith Lord is a Professor of Microbiology & Immunology and Oncology. Dr. Lord received her BA degree in microbiology from the University of Kansas in 1970 and a Ph.D degree in immunology from the University of California at San Diego in 1975. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco. As a faculty member since 1976, Dr. Lord has demonstrated excellence as a scientist and dedication to the training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

In her research, Dr. Lord focuses on the immune responses that can control tumor development and how immune cells function within the unique microenvironment of growing tumors. She has published, as author and co-author, more than 130 scientific articles and continues her passion for research today.

Dr. Jeremy Jamieson’s research focuses on social stress and decision making, emotion regulation, and risk and uncertainty. The primary focus of Dr. Jamieson’s work seeks to understand how stress impacts decisions, emotions, and performance. He is particularly interested in using physiological indices of bodily and mental states to delve into the mechanisms underlying the effects of stress on downstream outcomes. Dr. Jamieson is also interested in studying emotion regulation. His research in this area demonstrates that altering appraisals of stress and anxiety can go a long ways towards improving physiological and cognitive outcomes.

Faculty : Department of Psychology : University of Rochester

Dr. Lea Vacca Michel, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Currently, her work is focused on dual oriented bacterial lipoproteins and crystallin proteins, which are localized in the eye lens. Dr. Michel is the Chair of the Women in Science program at RIT, Director of the Rochester Project SEED program, and Director of the Research Strand for the HHMI-funded Inclusive Excellence program at RIT. She strives to increase the participation of women and underrepresented minorities (including those who are deaf and hard-of-hearing) in science and math. Dr. Michel was recently featured in an article that appeared in Nature (Nature 558, 149-151 (2018).

Lea Michel | RIT

Dr. Martin Zand is Professor of Medicine and Medical Humanities in the Division of Nephrology. He is also Co-Director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Co-Director of The Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration and Director of the Rochester Center for Health Informatics. His clinical practice is focused on the care of kidney transplant patients. His approach emphasizes holistic care of the whole person, mind and body. He brings to his practice of medicine an extensive experience in cutting edge clinical immunology, and a practical approach to wellness emphasizing exercise, diet, stress-reduction, and mindfulness. He has an active research program in the biology of antibody producing cells and their role in vaccine responses, transplant rejection, and health informatics.

Dr. Zand has a clinical practice in Transplant Nephrology and Transplant Medicine, and sees patients with kidney and other solid organ transplants. He is an internationally recognized expert in B cell immunobiology in solid organ transplantation. He directs an active NIH funded research program in B cell immunobiology, vaccine biology, and computational modeling of immune responses. He leads the Rochester Center for Health Informatics, which is focused on using advanced data science methods to analyze population health data to create a “living healthcare laboratory” which improves community health and healthcare delivery.

Dr. Zand’s research is focused in two areas: Understanding how B cells respond to vaccines and organ transplants to produce antibodies, and using graph theory to understand how we can understand and improve population health and healthcare delivery. His research groups use a similar core set of analytic methods in both areas, including high dimensional clustering methods, graph theory, differential equation and stochastic branching process modeling.

Martin S. Zand, M.D., Ph.D. – University of Rochester Medical Center

Dr. PJ Simpson-Haidaris’  major academic commitment is to serve as mentor to undergraduate, graduate, medical and resident fellows wishing to pursue academic research with the goal of fostering their desires to contribute to the scholarship and knowledge of the biomedical research disciplines and health professions. She has teaching commitments in both Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology at the graduate student level at the University of Rochester. Furthermore, her commitment to mentored-training is evidenced by her service since 2001 as a reviewer on the NHLBI Special Emphasis panels for mentored training awards including the K08, K22, K23, K24, K25 and K99/R00 award mechanisms, and since 2005 as a Scientist Reviewer for Department of Defense and Komen Foundation pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training grant awards.

Dr. Simpson-Haidaris’ research program at the University of Rochester includes both independent investigations and collaborative interactions with faculty members of the Departments of Pediatrics and Microbiology & Immunology on the pathogenic mechanisms of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and the host inflammatory response and wound repair in response to Photodynamic therapy of Candida infections, and in the Departments of Medicine and Biochemistry & Biophysics on the interactions of fibrinogen and fibrin at the vessel wall and the extracellular matrix. Additional collaborations with colleagues in the Cancer Center and Bioengineering are based on the role of fibrinogen in breast and prostate cancer, in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and the Cardiovascular Research Institute on studies examining cellular responses to heparin binding growth factors, fibrinogen, fibronectin and heparan sulfate proteoglycans in the extracellular matrix, in the Center for Oral Biology on the pathogenesis of infective endocarditis caused by Streptococcus mutans invasion of human coronary artery endothelial cells, and in the Infectious Disease Division on the the direct and indirect effects of Dengue virus infection of the vascular endothelium and the molecular pathways that may contribute to the vascular leakage syndrome associated with dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome.

Patricia J. Simpson-Haidaris, Ph.D. – University of Rochester Medical Center

Sarah Latchney is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She works in Dr. Martha Susiarjo’s laboratory, an assistant professor and member of the Environmental Health Sciences Center. With scientific training in environmental toxicology, Sarah is particularly interested in environmental influences on health and disease. Sarah also participates in mentored teaching opportunities at the University of Rochester Medical Center and Rochester Institute of Technology where she teaches courses in toxicology and scientific communications.

Sarah Latchney – Current Scholars – Rochester Partnership for Biomedical Research and Academic Career Training of Deaf Postdoctoral Scholars – University of Rochester Medical Center

Dr. Steve Barnett, MD, was born in Brooklyn, grew up in New Jersey, went to college in Philadelphia, attended medical school in New Jersey and did his residency in Wisconsin. He came to Rochester for the family systems medicine fellowship and stayed in the area doing research, locum tenens family medicine and rural emergency department work. He joined the UR Department of Family Medicine faculty in 2002 in the research division. Dr. Barnett’s primary academic focus is health and healthcare research with populations of Deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users and people with hearing loss, their families and communities. Dr. Barnett is the Director of the CDC-funded Rochester Prevention Research Center: National Center for Deaf Health Research, and is the Program Director at UR for the NIH-funded Rochester Bridges to the Doctorate program. He was also medical director (2002-2015) of the award-winning Strong Connections, the University of Rochester Medical Center’s pioneering Telehealth Sign Language Interpreter Services Program.

Steven L. Barnett, M.D. – University of Rochester Medical Center