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.

NBC CT - LSU Health Shreveport Virologist Jeremy Kamil told NBC Connecticut Investigates that halting their spread will require other measures. Kamil was among a team of researchers that discovered seven new COVID-19 strains, known as "variants," aside from the variants first identified in the UK, South Africa, and Brazil. 

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.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) today announced the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is awarding $4,617,645 to Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Shreveport and LSU and Agricultural and Mechanical (LSU and A&M) College Baton Rouge under the pharmacology, physiology, and biological chemistry research program.

KSLA12 - Extended interview with Dr. Andrew Yurochko, Professor and Carroll Feist Endowed Chair of Viral Oncology and Department Vice-Chair of Microbiology and Immunology

KSLA 12 - Dr. Robert Rhoads, professor and emeritus chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSU Health Shreveport, developed key components of the mRNA over years of work. The vaccine uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, which essentially provides instructions to the body on how to fight the novel coronavirus.

We are excited to announce that the paper "3D Printing for Bio-Synthetic Biliary Stents" is nominated for the 2020 Best Paper
Award from Bioengineering journal.

The Emerging Viral Threat (EVT) Lab at LSU Health Shreveport has now sequenced a total 651 Louisiana SARS-CoV-2 virus genomes making them the largest contributor to date of genetic data on SARS-CoV-2 in the state. SARS-CoV-2, which is short for ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2,’ is the virus that causes COVID-19, and viral genome sequencing is contributing to a worldwide effort to fight the ongoing pandemic.

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.

LSU Health Shreveport announces the creation of three new endowed scholarships and two new endowed professorships. Private donations of $360,000 will be combined with $140,000 in matching funds from the Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund to create these endowments.