We are saddened to share the news of the recent passing of two former School of Graduate Studies faculty members. The work of Dr. Dunn and Dr. Reed will live on through the countless students and post-docs that they taught throughout their careers. We extend our deepest sympathy to their families during this difficult time.

The May Graduate Student of the Month is Julie Tobin and she is a student in the lab of Dr. Ken McMartin.

Dr. Alan Kaye, Professor of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology, Toxicology and Neurosciences at LSUHS has been chosen as the 2022 recipient of the prestigious Racz Excellence Award by the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) given to one physician annually.

LSU Office of Research - While almost all research on addiction to stimulants (such as meth and cocaine) remains focused on dopamine and the body’s pleasure-and-reward system, a researcher at LSU Health Shreveport, Nicholas Goeders, took a different approach. Instead of reward, he looked at stress.

The December Graduate Student of the Month is Tyler Reekes.  Tyler entered the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Disbrow in the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology & Neuroscience in the summer of 2017.  His dissertation project is titled, “Sex specific cognitive differences in age-related neurodegenerative diseases”.

PRNewswire — JanOne Inc. (Nasdaq: JAN), a company focused on developing treatments for conditions that cause severe pain and drugs with non-addictive, pain-relieving properties, today announced the appointment of Nicholas E. Goeders, Ph.D. to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Dr. Goeders is considered one of the world’s leaders on the role of stress in drug addiction.

Kevin S. Murnane, PhD, was awarded the NINDS grant for the research project entitled, “Exploring the Role of Oxytocin in the Regulation of Neuronal Excitability,” is focused on form of catastrophic childhood epilepsy called Dravet syndrome.

Dr. Xiao-Hong Lu, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Neuroscience, received a $750,000 grant from NASA Biological and Physical Sciences Division’s Space Biology Program to develop a novel genetic engineering technology to evaluate the impact of space radiation on the human brain.

Dr. Xiao-Hong Lu’s research team will use the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory to simulate cosmic radiation in space vehicles and on the Martian surface to determine if long-term exposure to radiation causes adverse consequences to the brain.

Nicholas Goeders, PhD, was honored with the Wayne Drewry Award by the Council on Alcoholism & Drug Abuse of Northwest Louisiana for his work in the field of addiction.