UNews - ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona

2013 Gill Symposium honours neuroscience researcher McNaughton

robert.cooney — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 19:08:50 +0000

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Neuroscience researcher Dr. Bruce McNaughton is receiving a significant award from a major US-based neuroscience research institute located at Indiana ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, in Bloomington, IN.

As part of the annual Indiana ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ – Bloomington Gill Centre for Biomolecular Science Symposium, McNaughton, the Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (AIHS) Polaris Research Chair at the Department of Neuroscience and Canadian Center for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN), will receive the 2013 Gill Award for his significant contributions to neuroscience research.

He will also deliver a keynote address to the 300 delegates who attend the event each year from around the world.

Dr. Bruce McNaughton was the first scientist to win the $10 million Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (AIHS) Polaris Award, the richest health research award in Canada.

McNaughton joined the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in 2008, moving his research program from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona to the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

His research focuses on how brain cells process information and form memories, and how those processes are altered by aging, trauma or substance abuse.

McNaughton is the first scientist to win the $10 million Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (now Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions (AIHS)) Polaris Award, the richest health research award in Canada. The AIHS award of $10 million was matched by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (ICORE) for a total investment of $20 million into McNaughton's research and the CCBN.

There are presently 56 researchers on McNaughton’s Polaris team at the CCBN, including principal investigators, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, masters and undergraduate students, and a team of technicians.

According to Gerry Oxford, executive director of the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute and professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the IU School of Medicine, McNaughton has provided definitive experimental evidence for the concept that consolidation of memory -- in this case the memory of an individual journey in space -- was facilitated by repetitive "replay" of the hippocampal neuronal activity that occurred during the actual experience.

"His scientific accomplishments are extraordinary and broad, but with a relentless focus on understanding cognitive function through the dynamics of functional brain circuitry," Oxford said.

Gill Symposium organizers will also acknowledge the achievements of Dr. Loren M. Frank, associate professor of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California San Francisco Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Department of Physiology, who is receiving this year’s Gill Young Investigator Award. His findings have broken new ground concerning memory formation and wakefulness.

For more information about the Gill Symposium or the Gill Center please contact Misty Theodore at 812-856-1930 or mtheodor@indiana.edu.

To speak with Professor McNaughton, contact Amanda Mauthe-Kaddoura at 403-332-4099 or amanda.mauthe2@uleth.ca.

Website: http://ccbn.uleth.ca/people/primary/McNaughton.php

Professor Frank can be reached at 415-502-7357 or loren@phy.ucsf.edu.

For additional information, please visit the Gill Symposium website: http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/university-wide/2013/09/2013-gill-awards.shtml

About the Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science

The Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science, which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington, was established by a generous gift from Linda and Jack Gill to advance the understanding of complex biological processes and to train the next generation of scientists in biomolecular measurements, especially in the field of neuroscience. Members and collaborators include faculty from IU's departments of Biology, Chemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, Physics, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Neuroscience and the School of Medicine.

http://www.indiana.edu/~gillctr/symposiums.shtml

2010 faculty research awards

trevor.kenney — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:36:52 +0000

External SSHRC Grants
(Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)

Paul Vasey and Martin Lalumiere (Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada) $23,663
Claudia Malacrida is a co-applicant on a $1 million CURA through the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta

Independent Foundational Grants

Fangfang Li $4,800
Duane Rockerbie $4,000
Ed Wasiak $3,000
David Gregory $11,780
Malla Stavroula $11,500

CREDO Applications
(Community of Research Excellence Development Opportunities)

Kiki Benzon
Robin Bright
Lynn Kennedy
Kevin McGeough
Janice Newberry
Claudia Steinke/Helen Kelley
Wei Xu

CIHR
(Canadian Institutes of Health Research)

Ute Kothe
Igor Kovalchuk
Gerlinde Metz
Paul Vasey
H.-J. Wieden
Kelley Williams-Whitt

AGRI
(Alberta Gaming Research Institute)

Noella Piquette-Tomei, $10,000
Robert Williams, $44,000

Alberta Innovates-Health Solutions
(formerly AHFMR)

Igor Kovalchuk

ARDN
(Alberta Rural Development Network)

Noella Piquette Tomei
Steve Ferzacca

NIH
(National Institutes of Health)

Bruce McNaughton (2 grants awarded by NIH to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona were successfully transferred to the U of L)

Alberta Cancer Research Institute

Roy Golsteyn

Sport Science Association of Alberta

Jennifer Copeland

Alberta Family Wellness Initiative
(Norlien Foundation)

Noella Piquette-Tomei

NSERC CREATE Grant

Phil Teillet, Physics $1.5 Million over 6 years

NSERC Discovery Grants
(Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada)

Robert Laird, Biological Sciences (Developing and testing the evolutionary reliability theory of senescence) $24,000
Rene Boere, Chemistry & Biochemistry (Redox-generated free radicals: basic science to nanomaterials) $40,000
Paul Hayes, Chemistry & Biochemistry (Organometallic complexes of new pincer ligands: Structure, reactivity and catalysis) $61,000
Steven Mosimann, Chemistry & Biochemistry (Structure and function of PTP like inositol polyphosphatases) $31,000
Nathan Ng, Mathematics & Computer Science (Prime numbers and L-functions) $15,000
Aaron Gruber, Neuroscience (Dopamine modulation of neural dynamics and behavioral flexibility) $27,000
Brian Kolb, Neuroscience (Brain plasticity and behaviour) $105,000
Artur Luczak, Neuroscience (Neuronal population patterns - studying interactions among hundreds of neurons) $26,000
Deborah Saucier, Neuroscience (Neural and hormonal bases of sex differences in spatial ability) $42,000)
Masami Tatsuno, Neuroscience (Quiescent dependent memory consolidation: memory-trace replay during REM sleep) $23,000
David Euston, Psychology (Neural mechanisms of decision making in frontal cortex) $23,000
Martin Lalumiere, Psychology (The nature and functions of genital sexual arousal) $27,000
Paul Vasey, Psychology (The comparative biopsychology of non-conceptive sexuality) $30,000

NSERC Equipment Grants

Aaron Gruber, Neuroscience $96,373
Rene Boere, Chemistry $22,024

* We are unable to post SSHRC winners at this time as SSHRC has not officially announced its award recipients. They will be published once they are made available.

Campus Kudos

trevor.kenney — Fri, 07 May 2010 17:51:13 +0000

Shelley Scott (Theatre & Dramatic Arts) is presenting a paper called Asian Canadian Women Playwrights: The Ties that Bind at the GENesis Asian-Canadian Theatre Conference, May 3-9 in Toronto. The conference is the first of its kind in Canada.

Three U of L alumni have made the long list (Prairies and North region) for the 2010 Sobey Art Award. Daniel Wong (BFA '03) and Mary-Anne McTrowe (BFA '98), as The Cedar Tavern Singers AKA Les Phonorealistes, and Robyn Moody (BFA '00) are all in the running for this prestigious award.

Deric Olsen (New Media) has been invited to be an artist/filmmaker-in-residence at the New Media Studio Laboratory (NMSL) at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Regina, July 5-9. While there he will work on high definition post-production and delivery methods, and present New Format, New Challenges: Exploring Techniques in High Definition Disc Authoring and Design.

Alumnus Zoran Rajcic (BMgt '94) won the Western Hockey League's 2009-10 Marketing/Public Relations Award. Rajcic is the director of business operations for the Everett Silvertips.

The Faculty of Fine Arts video site (www.lethbridgefinearts.ca) is a finalist in the Best Non-Commercial Website category of Digital Alberta's Media Fresh awards. The web designer was New Media major Jesse Johnston and the advisory committee included:
Dr. Desmond Rochfort, Emily Luce, Chris Morris, Venkat Mahadevan and Katherine Wasiak.

Dr. Ed Jurkowski (Music) presented a paper entitled, How Formal Function Theory can inform Nineteenth-Century Deformed Sonata Designs: A Case Study using Bruckner's Symphonies, at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona (Tucson, Ariz.) during the annual joint meeting of the Rocky Mountain Societies for Music Theory and Musicology.

Dr. Arlan Schultz (Music) had his composition Ikos-kun tu 'bar ba premiered by The Rubbing Stone Ensemble at a concert at the Rozsa Centre in Calgary.

Karen Mahar (dean's office) received a $3,000 scholarship from Alberta Advanced Education in recognition of her exceptional work in her first year as a graduate student. Mahar is now in her second year of an MA in English.

Deanna Oye (Music) and Peter Visentin (Music) presented recitals of solo and duo music at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Manitoba and Canadian Mennonite ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ in Winnipeg last month. They also conducted master's classes and lessons in the areas of collaborative piano and violin. Visentin gave a lecture on his research into musicians' injuries to the Medical Rehabilitation Faculty of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Manitoba, and Oye also played a solo recital in Brandon, Man. following a week as senior piano adjudicator at the Brandon Festival of the Arts.

Cheng’s group posts best-ever regional result

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:24:15 +0000

Dr. Howard Cheng would like nothing better than to beat the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta at the Rocky Mountain Regional Programming Contest. With the group of students he has now, that's a distinct possibility.

Cheng and three groups of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students took part in the Rocky Mountain Regional in October. Two of the groups managed top-seven finishes in the computer programming competition, a best-ever result for the U of L and a harbinger of things to come.

"This is the best group we've had in a while and the strongest students still have a couple more years to go so we hope to only do better in the future," says Cheng.

The group of Darcy Best, Keilan Scholten and Michael Van Ryn led the way with a sixth-place standing, followed by another U of L team consisting of Falcon Momot, David Sessford and Corey Van Tighem, who placed seventh. The trio of Nathan House, Allysa Lumley and Marc Moreau finished 23rd overall in a field off 55 colleges and universities from throughout the Rocky Mountain region of both Canada and the United States.

The top five teams in the annual competition featured a pair of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta entries (first and fifth) as well as the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Saskatchewan (third). ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona grabbed the other two spots but only U of A is headed to the world finals. Cheng has been there once, ironically as a U of A student in 1998, and would relish the opportunity to go back as a coach.

The competitions feature teams of three students trying to solve a series of problems with real-world applications. They are given one computer and turned loose to design programs that will address the problems. Once they think they've found a solution, judges enter data into their created program to determine whether or not it works. If it does not, they are simply told the program is incorrect and can then try and fix it for a resubmission.

"Ultimately, the only way to practice for this is just doing lots and lots of problems, so that's what we do to prepare," Cheng says.

The majority of students he works with are from math and computer science disciplines. Both Best and Scholten are studying math and Van Ryn is in computer science, but Cheng says all manner of students can take part.
"The practice sessions we did here, without them I would have had no idea of what was going on. They help you get used to the approach you should take when looking at a programming problem," says Scholten, a second-year math student.

"The problem solving skills I get out of this will help me anywhere I want to go. Whether I'm trying to do a mathematical proof or work on something in a job later on, the skills I acquire here will definitely come in handy."

Cheng says the contests force students to take theory into practice.

"In a course you are taught a specific algorithm or method to solve problems in an isolated setting, you learn the theory but not necessarily all the ways to apply that theory," he says. "These problems force you to grab your knowledge and figure out what technique best suits the problem and then how to make it applicable, and occasionally you'll have to come up with something you've never seen before."

Students interested in joining Cheng's programming contest teams can contact him at howard.cheng@uleth.ca

Neuroscience Researcher Bruce McNaughton Among Alberta's 50 Most Influential People

trevor.kenney — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:04:56 +0000

Dr. Bruce McNaughton (Department of Neuroscience, Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience) has been named one of Alberta's 50 most influential people by Alberta Venture Magazine.

McNaughton is profiled in the July issue of the magazine, which is widely available at most newsstands, or electronically at the Alberta Venture website.

McNaughton is the first scientist to win the $10 million Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Polaris Award, the richest health research award in Canada.

He joined the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in 2008, and has moved his research program from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona to the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN) at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge.

McNaughhton's research focuses on how brain cells process information and form memories, and how those processes are altered by aging, trauma or substance abuse.

AHFMR's $10 million award has been matched by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (ICORE) for a total investment of $20 million into McNaughton's research and the CCBN.

Complete information about Dr. McNaughton, his research program and the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience can be found at this website: http://www.uleth.ca/notice/display.html?b=13&s=10837

Rethinking “brain gain”

trevor.kenney — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:20:57 +0000

This fall, Dr. Bruce McNaughton, one of the world's foremost experts in neurophysiology, proudly joined the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience (CCBN). It's a "brain gain" made possible through the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) Polaris Award – a 10-year, $10 million grant that will ultimately result in $20 million through matching funding.

Lured from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona, McNaughton says it's the world-class expertise of the researchers at the CCBN that attracted him to the U of L.

"Drs. Bryan Kolb, Ian Whishaw, Robert Sutherland and many others at the CCBN are pioneers in the behavioural neuroscience field," says McNaughton. "There is nothing in North America that is like what we're building here."

His addition is a major coup for the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ.

"This is the most significant hire in Canadian universities this year," says Dr. Dennis Fitzpatrick, vice-president (research). "The AHFMR Polaris Award is used to recruit internationally-significant scholars, and Dr. McNaughton is in that class."

Neuropsychology looks at how the brain works by figuring out what it can or cannot do when pieces of the mechanism are broken. McNaughton, a neurophysiologist, studies the healthy brain, gaining an understanding of the basis of knowledge. Alzheimer's patients, stroke victims and those with spinal injury all benefit from technology he has developed for measuring the activity of groups of healthy brain cells and how they interact with one another.

The brain is what we call a dynamical system, and it is constantly active, processing information even while we sleep," says McNaughton.

By unlocking the keys to how the brain generates knowledge, it opens the door to bypassing the broken connections in a damaged brain.

"The brain creates its own reality, and we're finding out how that works."

The CCBN has already established an unequaled reputation of innovative research; McNaughton's addition primes the U of L neuroscience team for unprecedented breakthroughs in discovery.

UNews - ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Arizona

2013 Gill Symposium honours neuroscience researcher McNaughton

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