News

Linda Van Eldik, director of the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, was awarded a "Part the Cloud" translational research grant from the Alzheimer's Association.

The University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) has been selected to participate in a multicenter, landmark $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to identify biomarkers for vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID). UK was one of just seven sites selected for the five-year NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) grant. The other sites are Boston University, Rush University, Johns Hopkins, University of Southern California, UCSF/UC-Davis and the University of New Mexico.

We are changing over to a new streamlined online scheduling system for all instruments in the Light Microscopy Core. Please register at:  http://rfom.ad.uky.edu/fom/register.

We are pleased to announce that the Office of Sponsored Projects Administration (OSPA) has a new staff member, John Craddock. John joins the staff under the auspices of the Vice President for Research with the goal of proactively streamlining compliance for UK investigators seeking funding that may be regulated by export control laws. John has worked as a Principal Investigator at the Center for Applied Energy Research on several export controlled projects where he developed protocols to remain in compliance with U.S. export control laws.

Two faculty members from the University of Kentucky have received three of four funded awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop responses to the opioid injection epidemic that can be implemented by public health systems in rural communities. Carrie Oser, an associate professor of sociology in the UK College of Arts & Sciences, was awarded a one-year, $150,000 grant for her project "Improving Outcomes after Prison for Appalachian PWIO (People who Inject Opioids): The Role of XR-NTX & Networks." This research aims to understand the factors and barriers related to a

The Office of Sponsored Projects Administration, the Proposal Development Office, the Office of Research Integrity–IRB, the Survey Research Center and the COM Sponsored Research Administrative Services offices will be closed Monday, December 26, 2016 through Monday, January 2, 2017 and will reopen on Tuesday, January

The Final Research Performance Progress Report (F-RPPR) will replace the Final Progress Report (FPR) for grants closeout, effective January 1, 2017.  The F-RPPR will be available for use in eRA Commons on January 1, 2017.  

NOTE: For small businesses, the new F-RPPR will be in effect at least 2 months later, due to the unique final reporting requirements that they face under the SBIR/STTR policy directive. 

For faculty members who are working with industry sponsors (non-clinical trial) for their research projects, please contact your COM Sponsored Research Administrative Services (SRAS) Grants Proposal Specialist (GPS), who can assist you during the time that you are negotiating your budget figures with the sponsor.  Your GPS can assist with:

Answering your questions about what costs are allowable on industry-sponsored agreements.

John Gensel, an assistant professor in the physiology department and the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center, and two members of his lab team—Bei Zhang and Taylor Otto—are featured in this podcast.

Taylor Otto, an undergraduate lab assistant in Gensel’s lab, described UK as being the full package. “We have it all here. It’s a good program to be able to come into, not really knowing what you want to exactly do in the science field, but being able to figure it out at the same time,” said Otto.

In the spring of 2016, the University of Kentucky hired Dr. Robert DiPaola as the new dean for the UK College of Medicine. He had previously been the director of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and vice chancellor for cancer programs at the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Center.

In an effort to be fair to all, NIH has been consistently applying its standards for application compliance.  This consistency means that some applications recently have been rejected due to non-compliance.  Issues that can lead NIH to reject an application include but are no limited to:

To celebrate the lives of those affected by Alzheimer's disease and to honor their caregivers, a purple light will glow at 13 locations on the University of Kentucky campus beginning Tuesday, Nov. 15. "Going Purple" will continue through Friday, Nov. 18. The promotion is a joint effort of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) and Elder Care at UK to promote Alzheimer's Awareness Month. Memorial Hall, Gatton College, Main Administration Building, W.T.

University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) hosted its sixth annual Markesbery Symposium on Aging and Dementia last week with speakers focused on brain health and self-care for caregivers. The two-day program offered sessions for both scientific and community audiences. On Friday, Nov. 4, the scientific session in the UK Chandler Hospital Pavilion A auditorium featured speakers Dr. Gary Small of UCLA and Dr. Julie Schneider of Rush University, who presented their latest findings and answered questions from the audience.

Clinicians and basic scientists convened to discuss challenges, triumphs and future directions in cardiovascular disease research during the 19th Annual Gill Heart Institute Cardiovascular Research Day on Nov. 4. Hosted by the UK Gill Heart Institute, the annual research day showcased scientific advancement in understanding and treating the various diseases of the blood vessels and heart. Topics presented at the conference ranged from identifying genomic markers correlated with heart disease to urging members of the public to put CPR training to action during an emergency.

University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center Oncologist Dr. Edward Romond spent his career at UK treating and studying breast cancer, even leading major Phase 3 clinical trials on the breast cancer drug trastuzumab in the early 2000s. Commonly known as Herceptin, this drug became a standard of care for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Though he retired from practice last year, Romond continues to work part-time with the research team at Markey, this time pushing toward a cure for a different, more deadly, type of breast cancer. 

The second annual Thomas V. Getchell, Ph.D., Memorial Award for excellence in grant writing was presented to Jenna Gollihue, a graduate student in the University of Kentucky Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center, on Nov. 2. The award honors the memory of Getchell, a former professor of physiology in the UK Department of Physiology who encouraged researchers to improve grant writing skills to acquire research funding. The award supports a travel stipend for a student participating in the annual Grant Writing Workshop.

When we think of research, our minds may possibly conjure up an image of a scientist in a white coat, hunched over a lab table, pouring chemicals into beakers. But research takes a multitude of forms, and flourishes in many different fields. From clinical trials for new cancer medication, to composing and recording an album of original music, and even to studying and refining the most effective ways to cure a country ham. Research often leads us toward answering questions we didn’t even think to ask. 

The University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) announced today that it received a four-year, $19.8 million Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the National Center for Advancing Clinical and Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health. CTSA grants support innovative solutions to improve the efficiency, quality, and impact of translating scientific discoveries into interventions or