Brain Day 2017 to put spotlight on Pitt's basic neuroscience research

Mark your calendar for Brain Day 2017 on Thursday, Oct. 26. Brain Day is an all-day, public event featuring poster sessions on the latest work in Pitt neuroscience labs, several talks by internal and external experts, and a panel discussion on advances in dementia research. Speakers at Brain Day 2017 will include:

Brain Day has three main goals.  First, the event provides a forum for advocates for neurological and neuropsychiatric issues to have in-depth conversations with researchers who study the brain. At the same time, Brain Day brings together Pitt’s vast neuroscience community, which includes more than 150 basic-research investigators across the upper and lower campuses. Third, scientists can interact with representatives of private funding agencies, individual donors and potential donors who share their interests. 

When: Thursday, October 26 (9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)

Where: (Note the new venue!) University Club

Brain Day 2016

A highlight of the poster sessions will be the selection by faculty members of eight young presenters who will receive Top Poster Awards.  The awards, each with a cash prize of $500, will go to four graduate students and four postdoctoral fellows. Awards will be divided equally among morning and afternoon posters, based on quality of research, as well as visual and oral presentation.  All attendees will be eligible to cast a vote for another honor, the People’s Choice award, which also comes with a $500 prize.

Niki KapsambelisThe keynote session, starting at 4 p.m., will focus on dementia.  Kapsambelis and Klunk will discuss Klunk’s work with a large Midwestern family that bears a genetic mutation that causes Alzheimer’s, often before age 50, in all who inherit the gene. Members of the DeMoe family, originally from North Dakota, travel to Pittsburgh every year so Klunk, who is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology and Levidow-Pittsburgh Foundation Chair in Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Disorders, and his colleagues can measure with brain scans and behavioral tests how the disease progresses.  

“It would prove to be a fortuitous partnership,” Kapsambelis writes in The Inheritance. “In Klunk, the DeMoe family finally found their champion: a man who cared about them as human beings as much as he cared about the scientific knowledge he could gain from their unusual genes.”


Listen to a WESA-NPR interview with Klunk and Kabsembelis.

William Klunk, PhDThe two speakers will lead off a panel discussion on the future of Alzheimer’s disease research, including critical issues and controversies.  Nathan Urban, PhD, Associate Director of the Brain Institute and Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Strategic Initiatives, will moderate.  Panelists include Klunk and Chet Mathis, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Radiology and UPMC Endowed Chair of PET Research, who have been at the forefront of developing imaging techniques to identify the onset of dementia as early as possible. Their Pittsburgh Compound B provides a means for early detection and also a method to chart the progress of the disease. Additional panelists include: Oscar Lopez, MD, neurology professor and ADRC director; Jeff Brodsky, Avinoff Chair of Biological Sciences and director of the new Center for Protein Conformational Diseases; and Amantha Thathiah, PhD, assistant professor of neurobiology. A question-and-answer period will follow the panel discussion.
 

Jan ScheuermannScheuermann and Hieshetter will speak during the lunch hour about volunteerism and advocacy in research, respectively.  Scheuermann will talk about her years as a volunteer research subject in one of Pitt’s pioneering brain-computer interface (BCI) projects.  An irreverent wit and valued colleague, Scheuermann once sported a pair of rodent ears and a tail at a lab meeting. (“I’m a lab rat!” she exclaimed to the few who were slow to catch on.)  Paralyzed by a neurodegenerative disease, Scheuermann in 2012 had experimental surgery to implant two sets of electrodes in her motor cortex, just under the surface of the brain. Tiny sensors tapped her brain’s activity as she imagined making arm and hand movements.  A computer then translated those neural signals into computerized instructions to a robotic arm and hand, allowing her to move them the way she wanted. Scheuermann has continued to draw media attention, both for her accomplishments in using brain control to operate a prosthetic arm freely in space and for her unique perspective as a BCI pioneer.  She has been featured on 60 Minutes, in hundreds of national and international newspapers, and in a book.  Scheuermann’s role as a research subject ended in 2014, and she is now writing her own book about her experiences.

Janet HieshetterJanet Hieshetter is the executive director of the American Brain Coalition (ABC), a non-profit advocacy organization in Washington D.C.  ABC advocates for support of research that may lead to better treatment, for services that improve quality of life, and for finding cures for disabling neurological and psychiatric disorders.  Top policy issues include increasing NIH funding for biomedical research, elimination of restrictions on federally funded stem-cell research and support of ethical use of animals in research.  Hieshetter also serves as executive director of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.  She is former director of community resource development at TRILOGY, Inc., and was senior director and interim executive director of the National Osteoporosis Foundation.

Attendance at the luncheon is by invitation only.