CBBRe Research Symposium 2019

Julie Kauer, PhD 

Professor in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Stanford University School of Medicine

Talk Title: "Acute stress and synaptic plasticity in the brain reward pathway"

For over twenty-five years Julie Kauer has headed a cellular neurophysiology research lab working in the field of synaptic transmission and plasticity. The Kauer lab uses pharmacological tools, optogenetics, mouse genetics, and brain slice recordings to understand synaptic function. Dr. Kauer has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience, was a member of the APS Editorial Board of Physiology, and currently serves on the Editorial boards of the Journal of Neurophysiology and Physiological Reviews. She was the elected Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Synaptic Transmission in 2006, and was an invited Special Lecturer at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in 2008. Julie Kauer served on the NIH study section, MNPS, and on the Board of Scientific Counselors for NINDS. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012 in recognition of her work on synaptic function. Most recently, Dr. Kauer has been elected to serve on the Council of the Society for Neuroscience. Recent focus areas of the lab include hippocampal synaptic plasticity, the effects of addictive drugs and stress in the midbrain reward circuitry, and spinal cord cellular physiology in the context of nociceptive processing. She worked at Brown University for many years where she was awarded the Sidney A. Fox and Dorthea Doctors Fox Professor of Ophthalmology, Visual Sciences and Neuroscience. In January 2019, Dr. Kauer’s lab moved to Stanford University, where they are pursuing collaborations with new colleagues working in the area of synaptic function and pain.

Gregg Henriques, PhD

Professor, Graduate Psychology; James Madison University

Talk Title: “Theory of Knowledge”

Dr. Gregg Henriques (Full Professor) has been in the JMU C-I Clinical and School program since 2003. He became director of the program in 2005. In addition to providing administrative oversight of the program, he also engages in clinical supervision and teaches courses on social and personality psychology, integrative psychotherapy and history and systems. His primary area of interest is in the development of a new unified approach to psychology, about which he has published extensively. In 2011 he outlined his approach in a book, A New Unified Theory of Psychology, (Springer, 2011). For the past several years, he has authored a Psychology Today blog called Theory of Knowledge, which offers weekly blog posts on a wide variety of topics related to his view for a more unified field.

Dr. Henriques is currently utilizing his system to systematically study character and well-being, social motivation and emotion, and to develop a more unified approach to psychotherapy. Dr. Henriques also has expertise in the assessment and treatment of severe psychopathology, particularly depression and suicide. Dr. Henriques is currently a licensed clinical psychologist in Virginia. He is married to Andrea Henriques and they have three children, Sydney, Jon, and Lanie.

Matthew Tull, PhD

Professor, Department of Psychology University of Toledo

Talk Title: “Understanding the Relation between PTSD and Substance Use Disorders from an Emotion Regulation Perspective”

Matthew T. Tull, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toledo. His program of research is focused on the role of emotion regulation difficulties in the relation between PTSD and substance use disorders, as well as maladaptive behaviors (e.g., treatment dropout, suicide, risky sexual behaviors) commonly associated with this co-occurrence. His research has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and he is a recipient of has received the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Chaim and Bella Danieli Young Professional Award and Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies President’s New Researcher Award.

Mary Cain, PhD

Department of Psychological Sciences

Kansas State University

Talk Title: “The impact of the early rearing environment on glutamate and drug-taking behavior”

Mary Cain, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kansas State University and is the Program Coordinator for the Behavioral Neuroscience & Animal Learning graduate program. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College in the Bronx, New York and then earned her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Vermont. She worked with Bruce Kapp to explore the role of amygdala in fear and arousal. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Kentucky with Mike Bardo where she examined the role of the environment and novelty in drug-taking behavior. She began as an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University in 2004. Broadly, her laboratory is interested in determining how the plasticity-induced changes that result from the early rearing environment alter the response to reinforcers in adulthood. With funding from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, she examines if alterations in glutamate homeostasis contribute to differences in psychostimulant self-administration in rats reared in enriched versus isolated environments. In addition, with COBRE funding (NIGMS) to the Cognitive and Neurobiological Approaches to Plasticity (CNAP) Center, she has begun to examine if differential rearing alters the primary hedonic response to reinforcers and the integrity of the neuronal microstructure. She is a Fellow of Divisions 6 and 28 of the American Psychological Association and the Midwestern Psychological Association. She enjoys mentoring doctoral and undergraduate students in her laboratory and has received several awards for her undergraduate research mentoring and teaching.

2019 Internal Speakers

BreAnne Danzi, PhD

Department of Psychology; University of South Dakota

Talk Title: “Understanding children’s responses to traumatic stress: Why developmentally sensitive assessment matters for researchers”

BreAnne A. Danzi, Ph.D., completed her graduate studies at the University of Miami and her clinical internship at University of California, Los Angeles in the area of Clinical Psychology, with a specialization in Clinical Child Psychology. Her research and clinical practice focuses on childhood traumatic stress. Specifically, she is interested in optimizing the conceptualization and assessment of children’s reactions to stress and trauma, as well as risk and resilience factors predicting mental health outcomes in youth. She is joining the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Dakota in August 2019. 

Jay Memmott, PhD

Department of Social Work; University of South Dakota

Talk Title: “Best Practices in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder”

Jay Memmott earned a BA in English at the University of Utah, and both his MSW and Ph.D. (in social work) at the University of Kansas in 1977 and 1984 respectively. He has worked as a social worker in inpatient and outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment settings, hospice and home health care, managed mental health care, and private practice. Jay started teaching full-time at the University of Oklahoma in 1989. In 1994, he joined the social work faculty at Saint Louis University. From July 2002 through July 2010, he served as the Department Chair and Director of the MSW Program at Washburn University. Jay served as department chair of Social Work at the University of South Dakota from July 2012 to May 2019. He recently stepped down from that position to resume full-time teaching, research, and service. Jay is a member of the Academy of Certified Social Workers (ACSW), the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). He has been a site team visitor for the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and is a current item writer for the Clinical Examination, which is administered by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) in the U.S. and Canada. Jay is also a part-time Clinical Therapy at LSS of South Dakota. Jay's current research and scholarly interests include health and mental health treatment, substance abuse recovery, natural or indigenous helping, and the processes of change.

Zhenqiang 'Rick' Wang, PhD

Department of Chemistry; University of South Dakota

Talk Title: “Nanostructured metal-organic supercontainers as a new therapeutic approach to treating Methamphetamine Addiction”

Dr. Z. Rick Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of South Dakota. He joined USD as an Assistant Professor in August 2010 and was promoted and granted tenure in 2016. He received his B.S. degree from Peking University in 2000 and his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of South Florida in 2006. Before coming to USD, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego from February 2007 to July 2010. His research program at USD focuses on investigating the synthetic and functional application aspects of a new class of supramolecular hosts known as metal–organic supercontainers (MOSCs). Dr. Wang’s work was recognized by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2014, and the USD President’s Award for Research Excellence (New-Mid Career Faculty) in 2015.

RuthEllen Anderson, PhD

MD/PhD Candidate; Basic Biomedical Sciences, University of South Dakota

Talk Title: “Altered sterol homeostasis disrupts clathrin-mediated endocytic trafficking through membrane curvature dynamics”

Elle is in her 3rd year of doctoral training in the physician scientist training program at the University of South Dakota where she is specializing in Cell and Molecular Biology under the mentorship of Dr. Kevin Francis. After completing a Bachelors of Arts in Biochemistry from Augustana University, she has pursued graduate studies at Sanford Research, focusing on pediatric disorders of cholesterol metabolism. Elle has presented her research at multiple international venues and her research is currently supported by an F30 NRSA fellowship through NINDS. Her research utilizes patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, and advanced imaging techniques to explore the consequences of altered sterol homeostasis on cellular trafficking pathways necessary for neurodevelopment and neuronal function.

Neeraj Tiwari

PhD Candidate; Basic Biomedical Sciences, University of South Dakota

Talk Title: "Treating Depression: Targeting Mood and Memory"

I did my master’s in Biomedical Sciences at Jhansi, UP (India). Before coming to the US for my Ph.D. I worked as a project assistant at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Pune, MH (India). I joined the University of South Dakota in 2013 and started working in Dr. Samuel Sathyanesan lab since 2015. Dr. Sathyanesan lab focuses on understanding the role played by multifunctional trophic factors in the central nervous system. My project is focused on studying the molecular mechanism of a compound called Carbamoylated Erythropoietin (CEPO), that can improve cognition. Besides research, I am an active member of groups on campus such as CBBRe Graduate student organization (CGSO) and Alternative week off Campus (AWOL) service-learning group.

Eric Sandhurst

PhD Candidate; Biomedical Engineering, University of South Dakota

Talk Title:”Multifunctional Biodegradable Porous Microspheres to Act as a Delivery Platform and Three-Dimensional Model for Neurological Disease”

Eric Sandhurst is currently a Neuroscience, Nanotechnology, and Networks (N3) Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Engineering Department. He received a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of South Dakota. His research is on biomaterials for tissue engineering applications at the University of South Dakota’s Graduate Education and Applied Research Center in Sioux Falls. He has been developing a biodegradable microsphere to act as a platform technology for studying drug delivery, as well as progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation in a three-dimensional environment. In addition to studying the role of biomaterials in bone tissue regeneration, He has recently begun working with Dr. Kevin Francis at Sanford Research as an N3 Fellow to explore the capacity of the microspheres to deliver both neural stem cells and drugs as a model for studying neurological disease.

Emily Kalantar

PhD Student; Clinical Psychology, University of South Dakota

Talk Title: "Relation of experiential avoidance, depression symptoms, and emotional reactivity to a distressing laboratory task in the context of inpatient substance use patients"

Emily Kalantar is a second year Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of South Dakota. She completed her undergraduate studies in psychology at California State University, Monterey Bay before working as a research assistant at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. There, she developed her interests in biological elements implicated in post-traumatic responses and how chronic and traumatic psychological stress increases risk for mental and physical health problems. She is currently working on her thesis project which aims to identify the effect of a self-compassion mindfulness exercise on emotion regulation as measured physiologically in the context of PTSD.