206 LSU Health Shreveport students representing the largest graduating class to date celebrated the culmination of hundreds of hours of academic accomplishment by graduating with a Bachelor’s, Master’s, PhD, or Doctorate degree on May 21, 2022. Dr. William F. Tate IV, President of LSU gave the keynote commencement address.

The scientific accomplishments of Dr. Eric First and Dr. Shile Huang have been recognized by our institution. Each has been promoted to full Professor, effective July 1, 2022. 

Graduate Student Appreciation Week was a week long celebration of our students in the School of Graduate Studies and included a Town Hall, along with wellness and social events.

The LSU Health Sciences Foundation of Shreveport hosted a Topping Out Ceremony celebrating the final structural beam being placed at the Center for Medical Education at LSU Health Shreveport on Wednesday, March 30. In addition, Ochsner LSU Health System announced an additional $8 million gift to the project.

Congratulations to Randa Eshaq, Megan Butler, and Naznin Sultana Rimi!

Gaganpreet Kaur, Graduate Assistant in the Harris Laboratory, was presented with the Outstanding Predoctoral Trainee Award. Ms. Kaur will graduate soon, and has been recognized throughout her academic career. She also recently received the Outstanding Poster Award at the Vascular Biology 2021 E-Poster Session.

Frontiers in Psychiatry - Dr. Marie Vazquez Morgan, Asst. Vice Chancellor of Institutional Wellness shares, "LSUHS is committed to reducing student burnout by assessing and addressing the issues causing and fueling poor mental student health and by providing an academic environment that values wellness and self-care."

Congratulations to Gaganpreet Kaur, Graduate Assistant in the Harris Lab. Gaganpreet has been chosen to receive an Outstanding Poster Award for her e-poster presentation at Vascular Biology 2021. Her poster was entitled, "The loss of Endothelial Glycocalyx in Diabetic Retinopathy".

The School of Graduate Studies welcomed 15 new PhD students to campus this week. Chris Kevil, Vice Chancellor for Research, shared, "Graduate school can be very stressful but it can also be very exciting because you are in the lab and you are making discoveries that no one has made before." 

Mabruka Alfaidi, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in Pathology at LSU Health Shreveport, has been selected as a recipient of an American Heart Association Career Development Award. This prestigious award supports highly promising healthcare and academic professionals in the early years of their career by funding innovative research and training to assure the future success of the awardee as a cardiovascular independent scientist.

BIZ Magazine - Celeste Y.C. Wu, PhD, post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Neurology at LSU Health Shreveport, was awarded the American Heart Association Career Development Award receiving $231,000 in funding.

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.

Dr. Lynn Harrison, Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, is the recipient of the 2021 Allen A. Copping Excellence in Teaching Award for Basic Science.

Mansoureh Barzegar, Graduate Assistant in the Alexander Laboratory in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, is the recipient of the 2021 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies. The Chancellor’s Award is presented annually to an outstanding graduating student.

The Rockefeller Foundation - LSU Health Shreveport (LSUHS) is receiving funding ($340,000) from the Rockefeller Foundation. This follows the announcement yesterday of LSUHS being awarded $730,000 to further its work in genomic sequencing of COVID-19 through a NIH supplemental grant.  LSUHS joins Harvard and the Broad Institute at MIT among others in the US Regional Accelerators for Genomic Surveillance.

Heather Fulkerson, PhD and Sadie Rice, PhD have written and illustrated a newly published children's book called "Microbiology for Kids: From A to Z" that is available for purchase online. 

The first quarter of 2021 publication of ON THE INSIDE is available now! See the latest in honors, appointments, publications and presentations by LSUHS faculty and students.

KTAL/KMSS - A team of scientists and clinicians at LSU Health Shreveport made a groundbreaking discovery for Alzheimer’s disease and Dementia. Dr. Karen Stokes said the new finding could be extremely impactful on Alzheimer’s disease because it will allow doctors to detect the disease early and monitor the progression better.

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.

We had a great participation for our School of Graduate Studies 2021 Graduate Research Day. We want to congratulate all of our poster and presentation winners!

Los Angeles Times - Scientists have found that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is capable of infecting two types of brain cells — neurons and astrocytes. Scientists have been trying to understand why and how it causes these issues in the brain, said study leader Diana Cruz-Topete, a molecular endocrinologist at LSU Health Shreveport.

LSU Health Shreveport leadership, faculty, staff, students and community supporters gathered to honor researchers, scientists and community members at the third annual Research Celebration held on Thursday, April 29.

Associate Professor, Dr. Changwon Park is a new addition to the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. The major effort of his lab is to decipher the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms as to the successful generation of the cardiovascular constituents, namely endothelial, endocardium, cardiomyocytes, and hematopoietic cells that share the multipotent cardiovascular progenitors, FLK1 (also known as VEGFR2) expressing cells.

LSUHS has received a 5 year grant for $10,529,128 from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to establish a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, or COBRE. The COBRE funds will establish the Center for Applied Immunology and Pathological Processes (CAIPP), which will operate on the LSU Health Shreveport campus.