How could the insights of cognitive neuroscience be more fully harnessed to help improve the outcomes of patients who undergo brain surgery?

That question, posed by Webster Pilcher, the Ernest & Thelma Del Monte Distinguished Professor in Neuromedicine and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, led him to connect in 2011 with University cognitive neuroscientist Brad Mahon.

The two formed a partnership that eventually became the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience’s Program for Translational Brain Mapping. The program guides neurosurgeons in conducting procedures, such as awake brain surgery, in which mere millimeters matter. The program helps measure recovery over time. Moreover, by studying individuals with brain lesions, researchers are also able to learn a great deal about sophisticated brain functions that occur daily.

Comparing data in patients with brain tumors and epilepsy with healthy individuals, the team is able to test models of the cognitive processes that underlie the ability to speak, think, and interact with the world. Read more.

Harl Tolbert will become associate vice president of URVentures, the University’s technology transfer office, effective October 8.

Tolbert, who has led technology transfer offices at Pennsylvania State University and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, was previously the associate director of the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Office of Technology Transfer, the original name for URVentures.

Tolbert will be responsible for translating the innovations of researchers into products and devices that benefit society. That could involve the development of new vaccines, medical devices, or communication services. In order to carry out its mission, URVentures helps researchers patent their work, license it to commercial partners, and create startup companies, when appropriate.

“I want us to be true partners with our research community,” says Tolbert. “And that means both the River Campus and the University of Rochester Medical Center.”

Tolbert sees a special opportunity in the field of pharmaceuticals. The University is part of the Empire Discovery Institute (EDI), a drug discovery accelerator that also includes the University of Buffalo and the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Tolbert says, “EDI will be a tremendous resource for Western New York and beyond as it develops new therapeutics.”

Stephen Dewhurst, interim vice president for research at the University and vice dean for research at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, announced the appointment. “Even while leading technology transfer offices at other prominent institutions, Harl maintained very strong, positive relationships with many of the long-term members of our URVentures team,” Dewhurst says. “He’s very smart, highly experienced, listens well, and has superb people skills. We were thrilled to offer him the chance to come home to Rochester.”

Tolbert says his experiences at Penn State and Roswell Park gave him different perspectives and skill sets. “At Roswell Park, I was able to focus almost exclusively on cancer research,” says Tolbert. “Penn State, as a much larger institution, gave me opportunities in very diverse areas, including medical licensing, biomedical technologies, chemistry, and engineering.”

Left to right: New faculty members Cantay Çalışkan, Rachel Glade, and Kaave Hosseini.

(This is the second of three posts about new faculty members in Arts, Sciences & Engineering.)

Cantay Çalışkan . . .

. . . joins the Goergen Institute for Data Science as an assistant professor of instruction, after serving as a visiting assistant professor of data analytics at Denison University.

Çalışkan has taught introductory and advanced data science courses on machine learning, data visualization, and social and ethical aspects of data science.

His research interests include computational social science, emotions in politics, social media, US Congress, networks of lobbying, and politics of renewable energy.

He uses machine learning and deep learning, network analysis, and data mining to find patterns in social and political data sets. Most recently, he has been working on several projects involving the diffusion of information in social media and the quantification of emotions in politics.

Rachel Glade . . . 

. . . joins the faculty of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences as an assistant professor, after serving as a postdoctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Glade’s research draws from fields including geomorphology, fluid mechanics, and materials science to understand how sediment dynamics influence the evolution of Earth’s surface.

Using a combination of theory, numerical models, lab experiments, and field work, she is particularly interested in the formation of spatial patterns both large—for example, rock exposures visible from space—and small—grains of sand on a riverbed.

Her current work focuses on Arctic landscapes, where ice, water, and soil interact to form striking, large-scale patterns that are linked to the formation of patterns found in fluids, such as paint drops or icing dripping down a cake. Glade’s research is important in understanding how cold landscapes and sediment erosion and deposition on hill slopes and in rivers will change over time in the presence of climate change.

Kaave Hosseini . . .

. . . has joined the Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor. Previously he was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.

His research is in the area of theoretical computer science and usually deals with pseudorandom objects, that is, objects that are not random but behave as random in some respects. He has used such objects to better understand a variety of questions across different areas:

• Is randomness necessary to significantly speed up computation?
• Can data be stored in a way that when corrupted it can be detected and restored quickly?
• How can a computer perform a task on a stream of incoming data quickly and on the go?
• How can computational devices jointly perform a given task with minimized communication among them?

Read more about these and other new faculty members in AS&E.

Menopause can mess with your memory, and a new Medical Center study identifies four profiles of cognitive function that may help researchers understand why memory declines for some women and not others.

This adds to the mounting evidence of the memory changes that can happen when menopause approaches and could lead to better guidance and treatment for patients experiencing memory issues.

“If we understand what goes on cognitively for women during this time, we can help normalize the experience,” said Miriam Weber, associate professor of neurology and obstetrics and gynecology who is the first author of the study published in the journal Climacteric.

Researchers collected data from 85 women ages 40-60 who were approaching or at the beginning of menopause. Women self-reported menopausal symptoms, had hormone levels measured, and took cognitive tests biannually for up to nine years. The data led investigators to identify four profiles of cognitive function a woman may experience: normal cognition, weakness in verbal learning and memory (the ability to learn new information and retain it over time), strength in verbal learning and memory, and strength in attention and executive function (the ability to multitask).

Researchers found that women experiencing a strength profile (strength in either verbal learning and memory or attention and executive function) had fewer depressive symptoms and hot flashes, while those experiencing cognitive weakness reported more sleep disturbances and symptoms of depression. Read more.

The Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies hosts a two-day symposium, “We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Chains: Black Study and Its Futures,” on September 24 and 25.

The event, which will be held in person and streamed live, features some of the top scholars in the field discussing the trajectory of Black studies within and outside the academy.

Frederick Douglass Institute Director Jeffrey McCune Jr. will present the inaugural Frederick Douglass Lecture, “The Politics of Disobedience is the Future,” at 3 p.m. EDT on September 25 to conclude the symposium.

Learn more and register for the symposium, which is free and open to the public.

The Center for Research on Flavored Tobacco (CRoFT), a partnership between Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and University of Rochester Medical Center, will hold its annual meeting on October 12-13 via Zoom, and will also host a virtual poster session.

All faculty and students are invited to submit scientific posters in the area of tobacco regulatory science, including posters that were submitted for previous and/or future conferences.

Additionally, all accepted posters will be featured on our website, where meeting attendees and guests can comment and rate each poster.

Please submit all posters as a PDF document via REDCap (https://is.gd/PosterSession2021) by September 27.

Contact WNY_CRoFT@urmc.rochester.edu with any questions regarding the poster submission process.

The film screening of Identifying Features at 7 p.m. this evening in the Humanities Center Conference Room D at Rush Rhees Library is part of a year-long series of Sawyer Seminar events exploring neglected but vital aspects of human migration in the Western hemisphere.

Funded by a prestigious grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, “Unbordering Migration in the Americas: Causes, Experiences, Identities”  offers public lectures, biweekly seminars, monthly workshops, film screenings, and an art exhibition that are free and open to the public.

For an updated list of events and more background about the Sawyer Seminar and its organizers, read more here.

The Empire Discovery Institute (EDI) Medicines Discovery Award Program is a competitive incubator and accelerator program designed to identify and advance promising early-stage drug discovery programs to initial proof of concept for commercialization.

Successful projects will exit the program as either a licensing transaction to a strategic pharmaceutical partner or as an EDI-created startup company.

Investigators must have a full-time position at the University of Rochester, University at Buffalo or Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Proposals should be submitted to EDI no later than Friday, October 22.

The Center of Excellence in Data Science has a new website. Visit http://www.rochester.edu/coe to learn how University faculty, scientists, and students can collaborate with the center in its efforts to advance the application of data science in New York State via these strategic objectives:

• bolstering businesses in New York State
• addressing the growing workforce demand for data scientists
• promoting collaboration among academia and industry and
• supporting government programs.