FOCUS in Sound

What is the biology of fear, the emotional response that drives so much behavior in humans and animals alike? Our guest on this edition of FOCUS In Sound, Dr. Kerry Ressler, is determined to answer that question, and in doing so to help the millions of people who suffer from fear-based disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder. Kerry is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience in Atlanta, and directs the Grady Trauma Project, which is a major study of the gene-environment interactions underlying post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves patients at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. In 2006, he received a five-year Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research. In 2007, he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Kerry’s lab at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory is focused o

Our guest on this edition of FOCUS In Sound is Dr. Blossom Damania, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 2006, Blossom was named a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease in support of her research into the role of signaling proteins in the pathogenesis of viral-associated cancers such as Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, or KSHV. She is also a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Research Scholar, and has received major support from the V Foundation, the American Herpes Foundation, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the American Heart Association.

Our guest on this edition of FOCUS In Sound is Dr. Laura Miller, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the principal investigator in the Mathematical Physiology Group at UNC. In 2006, Laura received the Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. That award calls for Candidates to draw from their training in a scientific field other than biology to propose innovative approaches to answer important questions in the biological sciences. Now if there was ever a recipient who personifies that concept, it’s Laura Miller. She works in a very specialized scientific niche called mathematical biology, combining approaches from mathematics, biology, and fluid dynamics to reveal some remarkable insights about the natural world.

On this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we highlight a very successful science education program for high school students that has received support from the Fund’s Student Science Enrichment Program. It’s called LEAP, or Launch into Education About Pharmacology. Based at the Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, LEAP targets students at high schools in seven counties surrounding Durham. LEAP is an intensive three-week summer course followed by an opportunity during the school year for students to design a research project addressing pharmacology concepts, or to develop a presentation on pharmacology issues that are of interest to them.