The AS&E Graduate Research Symposium, held March 23 at the Feldman Ballroom, featured research by more than 50 graduate students.

“The AS&E Graduate Research Symposium, including presenters from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering, was a great opportunity for graduate students to share their research with faculty, staff, and other students,” says Nick Vamivakas, AS&E dean of graduate education and postdoctoral affairs. “The breadth and quality of research on display at the Symposium was outstanding!”

These students received $300 prizes for best posters and presentations:

• Claire Becker, history: “Estas Cuentas Estuvieró en el Cielo”: Franciscan Nuns, Miraculous Relics, and Experiential Knowledge in the Early Modern World
• Maria Castaño, evolutionary biology:  Is Evolution Predictable? A Comparison Between Parallel Hybrid Zones of the Same Subspecies Pair and Its Implications for Reproductive Isolation (Flame-rumped Tanager; Colombia)
• Karen Gilbert, psychology: Feeling Poor or Feeling Poorer: Comparing Subjective Measures of Economic Status in Predicting Health and Well-Being
• Brandon Ruszala, biomedical engineering: Injecting Arbitrary Instructions into Anterior Parietal Cortex with Low-Amplitude Intracortical Microstimulation

A listing of all entries, including abstracts of each student’s research, can be found here. The event was sponsored by the Office of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs (GEPA) and the Graduate Student Association (GSA).

Researchers may have found a way to revive some vision loss caused by age-related macular degeneration – the leading cause of blindness – and the inherited disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a rare genetic disorder that causes the breakdown and loss of cells in the retina.

The drug disulfiram – marketed under the brand name Antabuse – used to treat alcoholism, may hold the key to restoring this vision loss, according to a paper in Science Advances.

“We knew the pathway that the drug disulfiram blocks to treat alcoholism was very similar to the pathway that’s hyper-activated in degenerative blindness,” says first author Michael Telias, assistant professor of ophthalmology, neuroscience, and the Center for Visual Science. “We expected some improvement, but our findings surpassed our expectations. We saw vision that had been lost over a long period of time preserved in those who received the treatment.”

In research involving mice, researchers found that disulfiram helped restore some vision by suppressing the sensory noise in the inner retina. The noise is caused by dying photoreceptors in the outer retina, brought on by the progression of outer retinal degeneration (such as age-related macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa). This degeneration causes light-sensing cells called “photoreceptors” to slowly die over years. Learn more.

A consortium of nine industry, government, and academic partners, led by University researcher Benjamin Miller, will develop the first integrated photonic sensors capable of detecting not only COVID-19 and its variants, but also other emerging viruses. The technology could even predict the severity of these and other infections.

“In two years, we want to have an advanced prototype that is ready for a company to fully commercialize,” says Miller, a Dean’s Professor of Dermatology with joint appointments in biomedical engineering, biochemistry and biophysics, optics, and materials science. “We want to have all the data ready to go so a company can pick this up and run with it.”

A drop of blood, serum, or saliva will be collected on an inexpensive, disposable integrated photonic chip that can then be inserted into a portable reader, producing results in one minute. The system could be used in doctors’ offices and rural or inner-city clinics.

“A major goal is to make this technology in a format that can be deployed to people who might otherwise have difficulty getting medical care,” Miller says. Learn more.

A cancer scientist, a chemist, and a biomedical engineer at the University and its Wilmot Cancer Institute have discovered a potential new drug and a new way to deliver it directly to acute myeloid leukemia cells.

The investigational drug is derived from plants in the magnolia family. Known as micheliolide, it has been studied for years because of its anti-cancer activity. The Rochester trio invented a new synthetic version of the agent with more stability, and repackaged it using nanoparticles designed to swiftly send the drug to the bone marrow where leukemia hides and blooms.

The team includes Rudi Fasan, the Andrew S. Kende Professor of Chemistry; Danielle Benoit, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Material Science Program; and Ben Frisch, assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and biomedical engineering. The trio launched their project in 2017, aided by University seed funding.

Their paper, in the journal Advanced Therapeutics, describes progress to selectively destroy the stem cells at the root of acute leukemia, a disease with a generally low survival rate.

For a more thorough look at their work and how drug analogs move through technology and toward patient care click here.

Imagine the learning process involved when a mechanic trained on traditional combustion engines is confronted with an electric vehicle. Or when an EMT must gain expertise in the latest point of care diagnostic tools.

Now imagine the same scenario on a battlefield where the pressure to fix equipment and mend soldiers is further magnified.

Chenliang Xu, assistant professor of computer science, is joining lead investigators at Stevens Institute of Technology and other collaborators from Purdue University and the University of Michigan to address this challenge. The team is developing an augmented reality program that could interactively guide nonexpert humans through complex tasks. The research is being supported with a $5.9 million award from the Perceptually-enabled Task Guidance (PTG) program at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Xu’s share of the award is nearly $1 million.

The project will use artificial intelligence (AI) to continuously train a program, nicknamed MILLY, in complex tasks, through YouTube videos, instruction manuals, checklists, and so forth. The program would then guide human users in completing complex tasks through wearable sensors and augmented reality headsets.

Xu’s group will develop foundational AI capabilities that can understand egocentric audio-visual signals like humans do and plan task procedures on the fly to guide nonexpert humans through complex tasks. Learn more.

Three Minute Thesis finalists Raquel Ajalik, Uday Chockanathan, Courtney Kellogg, Alyson March, Sarah Morgan, Emily Quarato, John Steinmetz, and Tara Vrooman.

Eight University doctoral students will compete for prizes in the annual Three Minute Thesis Competition at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, in the Class of ’62 Auditorium at the Medical Center.

They are:

• Raquel Ajalik, biomedical engineering: About time we start a-tendon-clinical trials-on-a-chip.
• Uday Chockanathan, neuroscience: Population coding deficits in Alzheimer’s disease.
• Courtney Kellogg, cell biology of disease: Are your Hair Cells there?
• Alyson March, biomedical engineering: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but hydrogels can help me.
• Sarah Morgan, toxicology: Bioactivity of Environmental Microplastics.
• Emily Quarato, toxicology: Stress Eating: A mesenchymal stromal cell response to radiation therapy.
• John Steinmetz, physics and astronomy: How to film a Quantum Computer.
• Tara Vrooman, immunology, Investigating the Long-Term Effects of SBRT/IL-12 Therapy in a Murine Model of Pancreatic Cancer.

The annual competition challenges doctoral students to describe their research within three minutes to a general audience. A panel of judges select the first-place winner and runner-up, and audience members choose the recipient of the People’s Choice Award.

All members of the University are invited to attend. Bring your laptop or smartphone to cast your vote electronically.

This event is sponsored by the SMD myHub, AS&E Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs Office, the Graduate Student Society (GSS), the Graduate Student Association (GSA), and the International Services Office (ISO).

For more information, visit the event’s website at myhub.urmc.edu/3MT and check out other events here happening during Graduate Student Appreciation Week 2022.

The Center for Research on Flavored Tobacco (CRoFT) is seeking applications for research pilot projects to inform FDA regulation of tobacco products.

Pilot projects should address one or more of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products priority areas:  toxicity, addiction, health effects, behavior, communications, marketing influences, and impact analysis, all related to tobacco products and electronic nicotine delivery systems such as e-cigarettes.

Applicants have the option to include a request for supplemental funding of up to $13,000 if the mentored pilot project addresses existing cancer disparities focused on e-cigarettes and/or vaping flavors.

The deadline for applications is 11:59 p.m., May 2 for projects beginning September 1.

The Medical Center’s Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation Unit seeks applications for two pilot awards of up to $50,000 to foster new ideas and clinical, translational, or basic science research projects related to the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for infectious diseases.

Submit 1-page abstracts to Goonwattie Surajpal before or on May 15, 2022, by 5 p.m. EST. Learn more.