(Input from faculty, staff, and students is vital to the University’s strategic planning now underway. This is part of a series looking at key areas in which faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to submit ideas for new research initiatives, or for policies, practices, or resources that will strengthen the University’s competitive position as a premier research institution. Suggestions can be made until November 17.)

The central purpose of the Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience is to reduce the burden of neurological and neuropsychiatric disease in our society through development of basic scientific knowledge and of novel therapeutic approaches.

Many fundamental neuroscientific questions simply cannot be broached at the level of an individual laboratory or investigator. They demand concerted multi-investigator teams. These are the so-called “wicked” problems of neuroscience, and the University, through the efforts of the Del Monte Institute, will position itself to confront these challenges aggressively.

We embrace as a core principle that it is only through fundamental understanding of the machinations of the brain that we can hope to provide effective evidence-based therapies to those suffering from severe mental illnesses and neurological disease.

A SIX-PRONGED STRATEGIC APPROACH

• Develop signature shared-resource space centered on model systems (cellular and molecular approaches), animal models, human patient-based investigations, and next-generation core facilities—what we have termed “the geography of integrative neuroscience.”
• Establish a highly efficient, streamlined administrative office with advanced expertise in grants administration, project coordination, philanthropic development, community outreach, and media relations.
• Recruit key new faculty members to supplement and expand our centers of excellence by pursuing an interdepartmental co-investment strategy.
• Seed and sustain programmatically focused centers of excellence around key basic science and clinical translational research topics and foster collaborative inter-disciplinary initiatives that remove traditional barriers between different fields of investigation. The four centers selected to date are the Rochester Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (Kerry O’Banion and Anton Porsteinsson), the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (Tristram Smith and John Foxe), the Center for Health and Technology (Erika Augustine and Ray Dorsey), and the Center for Neural Augmentation and Virtual Reality (Edmund Lalor and Duje Tadin).
• Grow our diverse student and postdoctoral talent pool and provide innovative new training opportunities through the establishment of interdepartmental cross-disciplinary curricula.
• Project the institute onto the international stage through vigorous public relations and media efforts and establish the Del Monte Institute as a recognized International leader in neuroscience and neurotherapeutics.

We are soliciting input to develop additional thrusts in neuroscience. All submissions will remain anonymous unless a direct response is requested. Click here to submit a suggestion by November 17. The suggestion form can be submitted more than once if you have multiple ideas.

In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy constructed a grand and historical epic by telling the stories of many individuals whose collective deeds comprised the life of the nation. This idea that individual lives could provide insight into the larger patterns and structures of history lay fallow for much of the 20th century. However, it re-emerged in the midst of the turbulent historical politics of the 1970s when Carlo Ginzburg decided to explore a miller’s bookshelf in The Cheese and the Worms.

The current and future relevancy of microhistory, which challenges not only dominant modes of historical inquiry, but our understanding of historical processes, will be examined by 20 Rochester, US and international scholars at a symposium to be held November 17 and 18 in the Hawkins-Carlson Room at Rush Rhees Library.

The scholars represent a wide range of fields including Renaissance Europe, the early modern Mediterranean world, colonial Latin America, early America, modern China, postcolonial Africa, and twentieth-century Eastern Europe.

The time is ripe for a re-evaluation of the field.  Many historians focus on “connected histories,” preferring topics that transcend narrowly-bounded geographical, religious, and linguistic areas.

However, newer work by global historians has made clear that the need for single case studies is more pressing than ever, by showing that macro-level analyses too often lead to the kinds of generalizations that were once associated with the very Eurocentrism that global history aims to undo.

Moreover, the historical field has adopted new tools for the analysis of the individual self since the publication of classic texts such as The Cheese and the Worms and The Return of Martin Guerre. The history of emotions, history of the senses, and theories of self-fashioning and self-presentation have become respected, effective tools. Historians can now consider the role of emotions in the life of a common villager or think through the different ways smell and touch were experienced by lost communities. And they can endeavor to bring those insights into dialogue with “big” history.

Click here for details about the symposium’s schedule and participating scholars.

The annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, the world’s largest organization dedicated to the study of music as a scholarly discipline, will take place at the Riverside Convention Center and the Rochester Riverside and Hyatt Hotels from November 9 to 12.

 The gathering will include nearly 2,000 scholars, specializing in all types of music from all over the world. In addition to musical performances, demonstrations, and tours, the conference includes hundreds of scholarly presentations ranging from the twelfth century to Bach and Beethoven and to current trends in hip hop and film music.

Included this year is a plenary talk that is open to the public, free of charge. Elaine Sisman, well-known scholar and professor of music at Columbia University, will present a public lecture, “Working Titles, Sticky Notes, Red Threads.” It takes place at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday November 9, at the Hyatt Hotel Grand Ballroom.

Presentations by Rochester scholars include:

Andrew Cashner, assistant professor of music in the College Department of Music: “Musical Texts as a Source for Understanding Racial Attitudes in New Spain.”

Gabrielle Cornish, PhD student at the Eastman School: “Sounding the Gulag: Toward a Sonic History of the Soviet Labor Camps.”

John Covach, chair of the College Department of Music and director, Institute for Popular Music: “It’s a Man’s World? The Supremes in 1964.”

Lisa Jakelski, associate professor of musicology at the Eastman School: “Reviving Lutosławski: Krystian Zimerman in Warsaw, 1988/2013.”

Darren Mueller, assistant professor of musicology at the Eastman School: “At the Margins of Music: Miles Davis, Sound Reproduction, and the Artistry of Mistakes.”

Derek Remes, PhD student at Eastman School of Music: “Reconsidering J. S. Bach’s Figured-Bass Chorale Pedagogy in Light of a New Source.”

Austin Richey, PhD student at the Eastman School: “Black Atlantic Dialogues: Detroit, Zimbabwe, and Performative Cultures in the New Global South.”

Megan Steigerwald, PhD student at the Eastman School: “Opera as Verb: Liveness and Labor in Alternative Opera.”

Click here for a full schedule.

The Wilmot Cancer Institute will be among the first sites in the world to offer CAR T-cell therapy —a new type of immunotherapy—to adults with aggressive lymphoma. The engineered gene therapy has been described as a revolutionary “living drug” and one of the most powerful cancer treatments to emerge in recent years.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week approved Kite Pharma’s therapy, called Yescarta. It works by boosting a patient’s immune system to seek and kill the cancer cells involved in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer for which there is no cure.

Wilmot is expected to be the only cancer center in upstate New York and between Michigan and Boston, to provide Yescarta therapy.

“This is potentially transformative therapy for a subset of patients with relapsed, aggressive lymphomas who have few other options,” said Jonathan Friedberg, Wilmot’s director and a lymphoma expert.

Read more here.

• Gretchen Birbeck, the Edward A. and Alma Vollertsen Rykenboer Professor of Neurology, who has been recognized by the American Neurological Association with one of its 2017 scientific awards for her research on the neurological damage associated with malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.  Birbeck was recognized with the ANA’s Soriano Lectureship. During her presentation, Birbeck described research to blunt neurological consequences –behavioral disorders, cognitive impairment, and seizures – that can often accompany cases of pediatric cerebral malaria. Read more here.
• Nick Vamivakas, associate professor of quantum optics and quantum physics, and Stavros Demos, senior scientist and Optical Materials Group leader at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Both have been elected Fellows of the Optical Society (OSA). Fellows are elected to recognize members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics.
  Vamivakas researches light-matter interaction at the nanoscale. He is particularly interested in using optics to interrogate and control both artificial and naturally occurring solid-state quantum emitters. Potential applications range from optical metrology to quantum information science.
  Demos’s citation is for “pioneering and sustained contributions to understanding dynamic behaviors and improved performance in optical materials for high power lasers and developing multimodal imaging and characterization methods for medical and other applications.” One of his inventions — a licensed ultra sensitive endoscopic imaging technology and a product prototype for detecting bladder cancer — is currently under development and clinical testing in collaboration with the School of Medicine.
• Elizabeth “Libby” Saionz, a student in the Translational Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, who recently received a Young Investigator Award for best student talk at the Optical Society of America’s Fall Vision Meeting. Saionz presented work showing that starting visual training sooner rather than later can help stroke patients regain more vision, more quickly. Saionz, who is also in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Medical Center, conducted her research under Krystel Huxlin, associate chair for research, and James V. Aquavella, professor of ophthalmology, in the Flaum Eye Institute. Read more at the CTSI Stories Blog.

Anderson Frey has joined the Department of Political Science as an assistant professor after obtaining his PhD in economics at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include political economy, applied quantitative methods, and the politics of developing countries. In a series of recent articles he examines the effects of poverty alleviation policies in the local politics of Brazil. He is also developing a model to understand political coalitions in environments plagued by clientelism, using data from Mexico. He is involved in a series of articles that employ economic techniques to quantify the effects of geographical sorting on US voter behavior.

The Library’s AR/VR User Research Working Group will be holding focus group sessions throughout November to learn more about AR/VR research, teaching, and learning needs on campus. Faculty sessions have been scheduled from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Thursday, November 2, and from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Monday, November 6. Interested faculty can sign up for a session using the online registration form. For information on student focus group sessions, visit library.rochester.edu/arvr. Direct questions to Lauren Di Monte at 276-3274 or ldimonte@library.rochester.edu.

Seeds for Collaboration, a series of faculty mixers sponsored by the Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience and the School of Medicine and Dentistry Dean’s office, continues on Wednesday, November 1.

The mixers are held to foster discourse that will ultimately result in inter-departmental and cross-disciplinary collaboration, discoveries, publications, and grant applications.

Following a half hour for faculty to mingle, three 5- to 8-minute seed talks will be presented, followed by discussion after all three speakers have finished.

The next mixer begins at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 1 in LeChase Assembly Room G.9676, and features these seed talks:

• Amanda M. Larracuente, assistant professor of biology: “Peering into the dark regions of genomes: the genomics of heterochromatin in Drosophila.”
• Charles Duffy, professor of neurology: “Neurophysiology of Aging.”
• Laurie Steiner, assistant professor of pediatrics: “Epigenetic Control of Erythropoiesis.”

The goal of Seeds for Collaboration is to provide basic science, translational, and clinical faculty alike an opportunity to share their research interests and directions and to attract collaborators in an informal, social environment.

The Clinical and Translational Science Institute will award pipeline pilot grants of up to $10,000 to stimulate research partnerships between UNYTE member institutions aimed at competing for future external translational biomedical research funding.

Research teams must consist of one faculty member from the University and at least one faculty member at another UNYTE member institution. The focus of the application should be on either a planning effort or a pilot research project leading to a CTSI pilot-funding application or to independent external funding.

Click here for more information about the UNYTE Translational Research Network including partner institutions. Click here for the full RFA.

The application deadline is December 1, 2017.

Matthew Bergkoetter, Optics, “Phase Retrieval for Chromatic Aberrations and Wide-Field Detectors.” 10 a.m. today, October 27, 2017. Bausch and Lomb 106. Advisor: Jim Fienup.

Casey Zampella, Clinical Psychology, “Quantifying Interpersonal Coordination in Autism Spectrum Disorder and its Role in Social Connectedness and Social Functioning.” 2:30 p.m. today, October 27, 2017. Meliora 366. Advisor: Loisa Bennetto.

Daniel Pontillo, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, “Object Naming in Visual Search Tasks.” 11 a.m. October 30, 2017. 301B Meliora Hall. Advisor: Michael Tanenhaus.

Tianyuan Ma, Materials Science, “Manganese Based Layered Oxides as Cathode Material for Sodium-ion Battery.” 2 p.m., November 1, 2017. Gavett Hall 202. Advisor: Jacob Jorne.

Oct. 31: Deadline to submit applications for funding to support health sciences research using high performance computational resources. For more information, contact Ben Miller at benjamin_miller@urmc.rochester.edu. To view the Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation web page, click here.

Nov. 4: Immune Imaging Symposium hosted by the Program for Advanced Immune Bioimaging.  International speakers, poster session, and oral presentations from students and postdoctoral fellows. 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.  Saunders Research Building. Lunch and refreshments will be served. For more information, click here. Registration is free.

Nov. 7: The Historical Roots of Machine Learning. CTSI Analytics Colloquium. Noon to 1 p.m. Lower Adolph Auditorium, Medical Center.

Nov. 8: Science, Technology, and Culture book club discusses The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi. 5 to 6 p.m. Humanities Center lobby (Rush Rhees Library). Email Emma_Grygotis@urmc.rochester.edu for more information.

November 8: “Figures and Forms: Thoughts on the ‘Inside’ and the ‘Outside’ of Music.” Oliver Schneller, professor of composition and director of the Eastman Audio Research Studio (EARS) at the Eastman School of Music.  Phelps Colloquium. 4 to 5:30 p.m. Max of Eastman Place. Click here to register.

Nov. 9: Wilmot Cancer Institute Scientific Symposium. Oral presentations and poster session.  9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium and Flaum Atrium, Prizes for best posters. Deadline for poster registration submission is November 1. For questions about the symposium, the poster presentation, or to obtain a poster registration form, contact Chelsea Costanzo at chelsea_costanzo@urmc.rochester.edu or at 273-1447.

Nov. 10: “Food Justice: Exploring Our Cultures’ Complexity.” University-wide Annual Research Conference. 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Interfaith Chapel and 305 Schlegel Hall. Click here to register and see the conference schedule and speaker profiles.

Nov. 13: Initial abstracts due for Incubator Awards from the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Scientific Advisory Committee. Find more details and application instructions online.

Nov. 15: Deadline to apply for Wilmot Cancer Institute’s Junior Investigator Award, for Collaborative Pilot Studies Targeting New NCI Funding, and for Brain Tumor Pilot Studies. For additional information and applications, click here. Applications should be submitted electronically to Pam Iadarola, research administrator, James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, Pamela_iadarola@urmc.rochester.edu. Questions should also be directed to her at 585-275-1537 or by email.

Nov. 15: Deadline to apply for a new Pipeline Pilot Award from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute for community-based participatory research that engages community members or organizations in all aspects of the research process. See the request for applications for more information; direct questions to mary_little@urmc.rochester.edu or 275-0653.

Nov. 17-18: The Future(s) of Microhistory: A Symposium. Nearly two dozen scholars from Rochester, the US and abroad examine the relevancy of studying individual lives to provide insight into the larger patterns and structures of history. Hawkins-Carlson Room. Click here for details about the schedule and participating scholars.

Dec. 1: Deadline to apply for UNYTE pipeline pilot awards from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, aimed at stimulating research partnerships between UNYTE member institutions. Click here for more information about the UNYTE Translational Research Network including partner institutions. Click here for the full RFA.

Dec. 1: Center for AIDS Research ninth annual HIV/AID Scientific Symposium. Keynote speakers and poster session. Click here for more information. Contact Laura Enders for more information about World AIDS Day events.

Dec. 6: Science, Technology, and Culture book club discusses Weapons of Math Destruction, by Cathy O’Neil. 5 to 6 p.m. Humanities Center lobby (Rush Rhees Library). Email Emma_Grygotis@urmc.rochester.edu for more information.

December 7: “Including Disability in the Diversity Conversation.” Susan Hetherington, associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities.  Phelps Colloquium. 4 to 5:30 p.m. Evarts Lounge, Helen Wood Hall. School of Nursing. Click here to register.