About a year and a half after COVID-19 rapidly spread around the globe, scientists have begun to examine the pandemic’s long-term societal effects. University psychologists and the University’s Mt. Hope Family Center have been awarded a $3.1 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the pandemic’s implications for American families and parenting.

The study’s principal coinvestigators, psychology professors Melissa Sturge-Apple and Patrick Davies, expect acute negative effects on family functioning and family cohesion to last for years, especially in families that already experienced high levels of difficulties prior to the pandemic.

While scientifically sound, measures to slow the pandemic—such as stay-at-home orders, remote instruction, and limited public gatherings—had negative repercussions on families.

“The pandemic has been extremely stressful for families with significant worries about the health of family members, financial instability, food uncertainty, social isolation, and increased caregiving burdens associated with having children at home,” says Sturge-Apple, who is also the University’s vice provost and dean of graduate education. “The study seeks to identify factors that helped families cope, in order to inform best interventions for families at risk.” Learn more.

Medical communities across the world continue to sound the alarm about the Delta COVID-19 variant, which is causing severe disease, hospitalizations, and death, particularly among those who are unvaccinated.

“We must use every available weapon in our tool kit to keep our faculty, staff, students, patients, and visitors safe, and prevent another surge of COVID in our community,” says Michael Apostolakos, chief medical officer at the Medical Center.

“Our health care workers, who have helped our community through the last two surges, need all of us to pitch in and do everything we can to tamp down what surely is looking like a third wave of COVID.”

Find more information on local infection rates and University policies designed to stop the spread.

Neb Duric, an international expert in ultrasound tomography, medical imaging, and astrophysics, has joined the Department of Imaging Sciences as vice chair of research.

He comes to the Medical Center from Wayne State University where he was professor of Oncology and Radiation Oncology for 17 years. He is also a founder and chief technology officer of Delphinus Medical Technologies.

“Dr. Duric has great strength in building nationally and internationally recognized research programs, which provides a tremendous opportunity for the department and institution,” says Jennifer Harvey, chair of Imaging Sciences.

During his tenure at Wayne State University, Duric was recognized for his role in development of ultrasound tomography and start-up companies in Michigan.

He has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific papers and publications, wrote the textbook Advanced Astrophysics, and edited four books on astronomical and medical imaging.

Paul Mitchell, a biomedical engineering PhD student, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award individual fellowship–totaling $92,000 over two years–from the National Institutes of Health. The funding will support his project to provide new information about spectrotemporal chirps, which are among the many complex features of human speech.

Understanding speech in background noise continues to be a major problem for a growing number of people who experience hearing loss because of age or exposure to dangerous noise levels.  Recent studies have shown that the inferior colliculus–a part of the midbrain that serves as a main auditory center in mammals–has a particular sensitivity to the direction and velocity of fast spectrotemporal chirps, which are found in speech sounds such as vowels.

The goals of Mitchell’s project are to:

• more precisely define the sensitivity in the mammalian central auditory system to fast chirps using physiological experiments,
• design a computational model of the inferior colliculus that accurately reflects chirp sensitivity, and
• assess the extent to which chirp sensitivity plays a role in human speech coding.

“This research has public health implications because its findings may represent an additional cue used for speech coding that may factor into the development of next-generation hearing aids,” Mitchell says. Learn more here.  Also, Mitchell describes his research in this video.

University of Rochester students and faculty are invited to participate in the Rochester Institute of Technology’s 6^th Annual Frameless XR Symposium on November 18 and 19.

This interdisciplinary symposium focuses on research, innovation, and artistic creation in the fields of virtual and augmented reality and is an opportunity to foster more collaboration with RIT in an area of learning and research important to both institutions.

RIT welcomes both in-person and remote participation for presenters and attendees this year. Further announcements will be posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The submission deadline for papers, talks, and workshops is September 3. Submission deadline for demos, installations, performances, and works in progress is October 8.

The University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI) is now accepting applications for four funding programs with a potential start date of July 1, 2022.

The Pilot Studies Program supports translational and clinical research that moves new discoveries along the translational continuum to humans and the community. There are three award categories: Faculty, Trainee and UNYTE Translational Research Network. View the RFA.

The Incubator Program supports the development of promising clinical and translational research within the institution, where substantial, carefully targeted investments can accelerate progress and create stand-alone programs. Learn more and view the RFA.

Initial abstracts for all opportunities are due on Monday, September 20.