A University of Rochester graduate of the Institute of Optics and a former faculty member shared the Nobel Prize in Physics this week for work they undertook at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE).

Donna Strickland, who received her doctorate in optics from Rochester in 1989 and is now a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and Gérard Mourou, a former engineering professor and scientist at LLE and currently a professor at the École Polytechnique in France, were recognized for their work to develop lasers as a high-powered tool that ultimately opened the door to new medical, scientific, and commercial applications. Known as “chirped-pulse amplification,” or CPA, the work was the basis of Strickland’s PhD dissertation at Rochester.

Strickland is only the third woman to receive the prize in physics, joining Marie Curie (1903) and Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1963). She is the first woman laureate in Rochester’s history.

“We need to celebrate women physicists because we’re out there,” Strickland said today after her prize was announced. “I am honored to be one of those women.”

Mike Campbell, director of the LLE, said Strickland and Mourou have helped shape the direction of research in high-powered lasers of the kind housed at the laser lab.

“The development of chirped pulse amplification by Gérard and Donna has created numerous new applications in science and industry and has catalyzed research around the world in high peak power lasers,” he said. “The research that led to the Nobel was conducted at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics and highlights the quality and innovation that has long characterized the University’s contributions to optics and laser science. All of us extend our sincere congratulations to Gérard and Donna for their pioneering and impactful research.”

In 1985 Mourou and Strickland demonstrated what has been described as a stunning advance in laser power, with a table-top terawatt laser, or “T-cubed laser.” Until then, the peak power of laser pulses was limited because of the serious damage the pulses caused to the material used to amplify them. Mourou and Strickland worked together to overcome the problem, developing the groundbreaking CPA technique, which involves three steps:

1. Stretching the laser pulse thousands of times
2. Amplifying the pulse in a laser material without damaging it
3. Recompressing it in time back to its original duration

The breakthrough paved the way for creating very short and very intense laser pulses lasting only a fraction of a second, making it possible to build more compact and precise laser systems. The CPA technique has been used in a variety of applications, from Lasik eye surgery to the manufacturing of materials used in smartphones.

Read more here.

Nine other Rochester alumni and faculty have received Nobel Prizes, across a range of categories that includes physics, medicine or physiology, and economics.

• 2017 Prize in Economic Sciences: Richard Thaler ’74 (PhD), one of the founders of behavioral economics.
• 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics: Masatoshi Koshiba ’55 (PhD), a physicist who led work to detect the subatomic particles known as neutrinos.
• 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics: Physicist Steven Chu ’70, former Secretary of Energy who developed methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
• 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences: Robert Fogel, an economist who pioneered quantitative analyses of social history.
• 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Carleton Gajdusek ’43, who is credited with discovering the infectious disease mechanism of prions.
• 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Arthur Kornberg ’41M (MD), who first discovered a way to synthesize DNA.
• 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Vincent du Vigneaud ’27 (PhD), a biochemist, for research on sulfur-containing compounds.
• 1943 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Biochemist Henrick Dam for his discovery of vitamin K.
• 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: George Whipple, founding dean of School of Medicine and Dentistry for his work to develop a therapy for anemia.

The University has been selected as a Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The new $9.2 million award will bring together researchers from industry and multiple academic institutions to focus on the development of digital tools to enhance understanding of the disease, engage broad populations in research, and accelerate the development of new treatments for Parkinson’s disease.

“We are currently in the midst of a Parkinson’s pandemic,” says neurologist Ray Dorsey, director of the Center for Health + Technology (CHeT) and principal investigator of the new UR Udall Center.  “From 1990 to 2015, the number of individuals with Parkinson’s disease globally has doubled and absent change will double again in the coming generation. . . .The medical community must develop new approaches to better understand this complex disease, expand access to specialized care, and increase the speed and efficiency in how we bring new treatments to the market.”

The new UR Udall Center will undertake research using mobile technologies such as smartphones, wearable sensors, and telemedicine to expand the reach of research and to develop objective measures of the disease in real-world settings.

The NINDS funding for the Udall Center at URMC will support four research programs:

• A team led by Karl Kieburtz and Charles Venuto is partnering with GNS Healthcare and Origent Data Sciences to develop advanced machine learning tools to create models that identify and predict the progression of the disease and the potential impact of new therapies to help researchers better understand and potential anticipate the outcomes of clinical trials.
• Bob Holloway, Ruth Schneider, and fellow investigators are partnering with 23andMe to identify individuals across the country with a rarer inherited form of Parkinson’s disease – characterized by a mutation in the LRRK2 gene – and will follow study participants via telemedicine for four years in an effort to better understand the progression of the disease.
• Suchi Saria, with Johns Hopkins University, will partner with researchers at URMC, Aston University in the UK, and Sage Bionetworks to develop a successor to the mPower smartphone application that enables participants and researchers to assess features of the disease on smartphones.
• Dorsey will collaborate with Ehsan Hoque and Gaurav Sharma of the Goergen Institute for Data Science, URMC neurologists Jamie Adams and Chris Tarolli, and researchers at MIT, the University of Michigan Udall Center, Intel, and MC10 to develop and evaluate several remote monitoring and wearable technologies that will help researchers more precisely understand how Parkinson’s disease affects individuals beyond what is observed when patients visit the clinic, but also in their homes and daily lives.

“The opportunity to apply technology to study complex health problems like Parkinson’s requires seamlessly integrating smart sensors in participant’s environment and leveraging the massive amount of data that they produce,” says Hoque, an assistant professor of computer science. “The new UR Udall Center represents the novel convergence of medicine and data science which has the potential to unlock new treatments for this disease.”

The four research projects will be supported by an administrative core led by Dorsey, Augustine, and Cynthia Casaceli; a clinical core led by Giovanni Schifitto; and an advanced analytics core that brings together bio-statistical and computer science expertise that will be led by Michael McDermott and Jiebo Luo, a professor of computer science.

Read more here.

A new study finds that high intensity rehabilitation, which may be driven by a desire to maximize reimbursement rates, is on the rise for nursing home patients in the last 30 days of life, indicating that these services may be interfering with appropriate end-of-life care.

“This study raises several concerns and questions regarding the scope and intensity of therapy provided to nursing home residents prior to death,” says lead author Helena Temkin-Greener of the Department of Public Health Sciences. The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. “If it is being driven by a failure to recognize that a resident is approaching end-of-life, then it calls for improving the skills of nursing home teams. If it is being driven by financial considerations then regulatory and policy interventions may be necessary.”

Nursing home Medicare reimbursement rates are based on categories that place patients into resource utilization groups (RUGs) based on the complexity, intensity, and amount of staff time dedicated to their care.  Patients who receive high levels of rehabilitation services fall into a category that makes these facilities eligible to collect the highest level of reimbursement for their care.

Recent reports from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have suggested that the volume and intensity of rehabilitation services provided to residents in skilled nursing facilities may be more extensive than warranted and found that billing for these services was on the rise. The OIG has also indicated that this data suggests that some nursing homes may be exploiting the payment system for rehabilitation services in order to “optimize their revenues.”

The authors of the current study analyzed data from 647 nursing home facilities in New York State. Specifically, they focused on residents who had received very high to ultrahigh rehabilitation services – physical, occupational, and speech therapy – during the last 30 days of life. Very high intensity rehabilitation is defined as 520 minutes or greater per week and ultrahigh as 720 minutes or greater, or the equivalent of two hours of rehab per day.

They found that residents receiving ultrahigh rehabilitation had increased by 65 percent between 2012 and 2015 and that most of the rehabilitation therapy residents received was concentrated in the last seven days of life. They also found that there was a significantly higher use of these services in for-profit nursing homes compared to not-for-profit homes.

While the study only included data from New York State, the authors contend that this phenomenon is likely more pronounced in other states, which have lower nursing home regulatory oversight.

Read more here.

Nearly one in five older patients with advanced cancer have financial problems that may cause them to delay treatment to cover food and housing costs, which leads to stress and poor quality of life, according to new Wilmot Cancer Institute research.

The “financial toxicity” study was conducted at several cancer clinics across the country, involving 542 patients ages 70 to 96, said senior author Supriya Mohile, a geriatric oncology expert and the Philip and Marilyn Wehrheim Professor at Wilmot.

“Our results are striking and important because it’s tapping into a patient population that reflects real world experiences,” Mohile said. “The majority of cancer patients are older, often living on restricted budgets, and do not want to be a burden on their children. Their money has to cover not just cancer-related expenses but other health expenses — such as high blood pressure or diabetes medications — and other costs of living. This is a common scenario and as a society we need to pay attention.”

Asad Arastu, a School of Medicine and Dentistry student with a background in economics, led the research by slicing out a subset of data from a larger, peer-reviewed study on geriatric assessments that Mohile had conducted in the past. They developed an easy-to-use screening tool for patients comprised of three questions: Have you ever delayed medications due to cost? Have you ever had insufficient income in a typical month for food and housing? Have you ever had insufficient income in a typical month for other basic needs?

Patients who answered yes to any of the questions were categorized as experiencing financial toxicity, Arastu said. The goal was to create a screening tool for busy oncologists with content that patients could easily and quickly understand.

On average, patients with financial hardships also scored lower on measurements of anxiety, depression, and quality of life — important factors to consider when caring for these patients because they can impact outcomes, Mohile said.

Read more here.

The fall 2018 round of the University’s Technology Development Fund has started.

Awards are up to $100,000 and are open to all faculty, staff, and students.

Eligible projects propose the development of a technology to a commercial endpoint.

A submitted invention disclosure to UR Ventures is required for an application.

Pre-proposals are due October 15 and should be submitted to omar.bakht@rochester.edu. More information can be found at Rochester.edu/tdf.

The University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI) offers many ways to assist researchers with subject recruitment, such as the electronic medical record, ResearchMatch.org, the Trial Innovation Network, and more.

On the Research Subject Recruitment page, seven videos describe in detail how these various resources can help and direct where to go on the website for additional recruitment tools.

A new regional health data report is now available at the UR CTSI’s health information data portal RocHealthData.Org. The data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the Department of Health and Human Services show variability by county in social support, alcohol consumption, and infant mortality within our region.

The report includes comparison with state and national rates, and may be customized to include other outcomes and social determinants of health.

Researchers interested in learning more about the National Science Foundation’s international funding programs are invited to attend a talk from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Oct. 16 in Goergen 101.

Charles Estabrook, who is program officer for the NSF Partnerships in International Research Education (PIRE) Program, will speak for about 45 minutes, followed by a Q&A session. The event is sponsored by the AS&E Dean for Research Office.

RSVP at https://urceis.wufoo.com/forms/s10qt7360vbqaq2/ by October 14. For further information, contact Debra Haring.

The 4^th Annual Immune Imaging Symposium,  hosted by the Program for Advanced Immune Bioimaging, will provide a forum to share the newest developments in understanding immune function through visualizing immunity “in action.”

The symposium, including a distinguished group of international speakers, an interactive poster session, and opportunities for oral presentations from students and postdoctoral fellows, will be held November 3 at Saunder’s Research Building.

Registration is free but closes on October 22.

Abstract deadline is October 12. Monetary awards will be presented at the end of the symposium for the best poster presentations. Submit your abstracts here.

New this year:  Send us your best image to win a prize.

Oct. 8: Deadline to register for “Career Engagement, Revitalization, and Transition: A Curriculum for Mid-Late Career Academic Faculty,” a course designed to help associate professors and professors identify additional resources and skills as they advance and transition through the phases of their academic careers. The course will be held 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, October 29 and Tuesday, October 30, location TBD. For additional information, contact Faculty Development, Ronnie Guillet, or Janine Shapiro.

Oct. 11: Forbes Scholar Lecture: “How to Communicate Science to the Public—or Die Trying,” presented by Paul Offit, the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and coinventor of the rotavirus vaccine. Noon,  Class of ’62 Auditorium (G-9425), Medical Center. Scientific poster session from 11 a.m. to noon in the Flaum Atrium.

Oct. 15: Deadline to submit letters of intent to apply for Center for AIDS Research funding to facilitate the design, conduct and completion of clinical trials aimed at preventing HPV-related cancers in HIV-infected individuals. Click here for more information.

Oct. 15: Pre-proposals due for University Technology Development Fund awards of up to $100,000 for development of a technology to a commercial endpoint. Open to all faculty, staff, and students.  Submit to omar.bakht@rochester.edu. More information can be found at Rochester.edu/tdf.

Oct. 15: Deadline to apply for AS&E PumpPrimer II awards for innovative and high-risk research projects. Click here for guidelines. Faculty in Arts & Sciences should refer questions to debra.haring@rochester.edu and those in engineering to cindy.gary@rochester.edu. PumpPrimer I and Research Mobility funds are also available and applications are accepted any time.

Oct. 15: Deadline for Central New York Humanities Corridor proposals. Learn more here.

Oct. 16: “Funding Opportunities at the National Science Foundation: An International Perspective.” Talk by NSF program officer Charles Estabrook on various NSF international funding programs. 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Goergen 101. Sponsored by the AS&E Dean for Research Office. RSVP at https://urceis.wufoo.com/forms/s10qt7360vbqaq2/ by October 14. For further information, contact Debra Haring.

Oct. 26: Deadline to apply for the 2018 World Universities Network (WUN) Research Development Fund. If you are interested in leading a proposal effort, contact the University’s WUN coordinator, Ruth Levenkron.

Oct. 29: “The Future is Today: Transforming the Care of Childhood Onset Chronic Health Conditions.” UR Complex Care Center’s Second Annual Conference, co-sponsored by UR CTSI’s UNYTE Translational Research Network. 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium. Click here to register.

Nov. 3: 4^th Annual Immune Imaging Symposium, a forum to share the newest developments in understanding immune function through visualizing immunity “in action.” featuring a distinguished group of international speakers, an interactive poster session, and opportunities for oral presentations from students and postdoctoral fellows. Saunder’s Research Building. Registration is free but closes on October 22. Hosted by the Program for Advanced Immune Bioimaging.

Nov. 5: Deadline for collaborative biomedical research teams to apply to the Center for Leading Innovation & Collaboration for funding to write a Synergy Paper. Questions can be directed to synergy_papers@clic-ctsa.org. Click here for the RFA.

Nov. 5: Annual Medical Student Research Poster session, noon to 1 p.m. Flaum Atrium, Medical Center. Medical students present their summer and year-out research projects. Contact omecached@urmc.rochester.edu with questions.

Nov. 12: Initial abstracts due for the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Scientific Advisory Committee’s (SAC) Incubator Program. See details and application instructions. Contact Anne Reed for more information.