During my second year of college at East Carolina University, after un-deciding to be a physician and feeling lost in my career choice, I fell deeply in love.  His name was Brain (not Brian). Brain was intellectually seductive, mysterious, and best of all, single. I was swept off my feet and instantly knew that I would spend the rest of my life in his curious orbit.
 
After finishing a double major in Brain and his softer sister, Psychology, I embarked on a journey towards a master’s degree at University of Hartford. There, I learned Brain’s birth story, marveled at its development, and conducted enough experiments to understand I actually don’t know Brain at all. Sure, animal Brain can explain basic physiological and psychological functions, but unfortunately animal Brain can’t answer my most burning questions: How does Brain create language, what is a memory, why do we fall in love? For that, I needed human Brain. I spent several years learning about human Brain at Yale University and University of Maryland Baltimore, captivated by the different methodological techniques available to unravel his secrets. I fell even deeper in love and made it official in 2015, when I entered a PhD program at University of Louisville and gave human Brain my full commitment.
 
During my graduate sojourn, I bravely asked human Brain to expose one of his deepest secrets, emotional intelligence - an oft-nebulous concept he and his sister Psychology ceaselessly argue about. Using fMRI, human Brain carefully showed me how he creates emotional intelligence by elegantly combining emotional regulation and empathy, processes that occupy overlapping spaces in his territory. By the end of my PhD, human Brain had explained his birth, development, and various networks that dynamically couple and uncouple to create his myriad cognitive and emotional functions. Yet I wondered, how will Brain change as he gets older?
 
As an Arizona Sursum Fellow in the Department of Psychology, my postdoctoral work is focused on Brain’s aging processes. For example, Brain’s memory and attention aren’t what they used to be, but he is more optimistic than his younger self and as loquacious as ever. In fact, Brain’s language and emotional abilities have improved greatly as he’s aged. So, I asked Brain why. Using emotional precision of word use as a marker, I am exploring how Brain’s ability to express himself compares to both younger Brains and Brains that are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
 
Brain has been my constant inspiration for over a decade. I have publicly written about him in Scientific American, HuffPost Science, Aeon/Psyche and Medium, and to encourage others to find their own love story, established a highly successful science internship program for high-school students: Louisville Science Pathways. As a postdoc, I co-founded Mentally Minded, an evidence-based Q&A website that serves as an empowering knowledge base for mental health information. Even after all these years, I am still in awe that I get to study Brain, or as Anthony Doerr poetically describes him, “one wet kilogram within which spin universes.”
 
If you would like to chat about Brain with me, please visit my website www.curiouscortex.com, or come join me for our monthly informal gathering, MetaMind.

Dr. Teodora Stoica was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Neuroimaging Skills Training during the Organization for Human Brain Mapping Meeting in Scotland, UK”​.

For me, it started with sunsets. What is responsible for that burning splash of color across the horizon? When I learned in high school chemistry that it was due to the particular composition and particles in the atmosphere, I was transfixed.
 
Today, I’m broadly interested in the study of planets in the Solar System and planets around other stars, which are called exoplanets. I specifically investigate their atmospheres, and in particular, the potential clouds and smog found on other planets. I want to figure out how these aerosols form and evolve, how they affect the overall atmosphere chemically and physically, how they change our observations of distant worlds, and how they impact habitability. In short, I try to figure out how clouds and hazes work — in everything from brown dwarfs to gas giants to ice giants to terrestrial worlds. I do so by combining my past and ongoing laboratory work and atmospheric computer models.
 
During my PhD work at Johns Hopkins University under the advisorship of Prof. Sarah Hörst, I experimentally explored how smog compositions change with different atmospheric  properties, from composition to temperature. I found that oxidized species, for exoplanets and for Neptune’s moon Triton, can be really important to smog formation and solid composition, in contrast to previous work from the Solar System that suggested only highly reducing atmospheres favor primarily hydrocarbon haze formation. I’m hard at work to implement these results into atmospheric models to compare with telescope observations both current and upcoming.
 
In addition, I run suites of atmospheric models to simulate how radiative transfer depends on various cloud and haze scenarios. For my postdoctoral work here at Arizona, I’m working closely with Professor Mark Marley to predict and interpret observations of all kinds of sub-stellar and planetary atmospheres from the Hubble Space Telescope and the newly operational JWST. I’m really excited to start seeing gaseous signatures of disequilibrium chemistry in these faraway worlds, and to try to connect these results to laboratory experiments on hazes.
 
Next up in the lab this fall, as an Arizona Sursum Fellow, I’m due to start a series of experiments exploring the role of the host star on the evolution of atmospheric haze. Haze primarily forms photochemically through dissociation and ionization of the gasses of the upper atmosphere. I hypothesize therefore that different stellar types with different ultraviolet fluxes should impact haze properties. We’ll be taking exoplanet-like hazes from my PhD lab and bombarding them with photons from UV lamps to measure the haze’s spectroscopic signatures before and after UV exposure.
 
Before grad school, I was at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York, where I majored in Astrophysics and spent a lot of time in various theatres (acting, dancing, set-building, stage managing, sight-seeing). I also ended up minoring in Science & Public Policy because I am passionate about improving the way we do science and who gets to participate in the scientific field. As part of that endeavor, I spent Fall 2019 in Washington, D.C. at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine with the Space Studies Board. There I helped with the Astro2020 Decadal Survey, the Solar and Space Physics Midterm Report, and planning for the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey. I’m still always interested in policy, both as Science for Policy and Policy for Science. One day in the (perhaps distant) future, I anticipate making the jump to spending most of my time in that realm rather than a lab.
 
Finally, there is always a niggling question on my mind: why study distant planets when the climate here on Earth is in a state of emergency? This is something I think about often as an extrasolar planetary scientist. But, to me, this pursuit of knowledge is one of the things that makes us very human. I could give you the clichés about how learning about other climates teaches us ultimately about our own, or a screed about the importance of fundamental research. Honestly, though, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because of that moment in high school chemistry — what makes the sunset so beautiful? We’re all here looking for meaning beyond ourselves. We are bits of discarded stardust yearning to understand its own atoms rearranged in countless ways – the universe working to know itself. It’s a privilege beyond measure that I can ask these questions and work toward making something like an answer to a small few of them. And I also want to know: Is someone else staring up at a distant sky wondering the same?
 
If you’d like to chat science (or apparently, philosophy of science), you can contact me on Twitter (@OF_FallingStars) or just follow along as I tweet about science, my running goals, and my hot takes on the nature of other planets.

Dr. Sarah Moran was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Alteration of Planetary Hazes Related to Composition of Host Star”.

​What makes one cancer more aggressive than another? What makes a tumor metastatic? These are the questions that I strive to answer through science. My field of research is translational cancer biology. Like many researchers that aim to contribute to the collection of knowledge about cancers and how to treat it, I hope to positively impact those who have been and will be affected by cancer.
 
My name is Martha B. Dua-Awereh and I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson in the department of Immunobiology. My laboratory is in the University of Arizona Cancer Center. My mentor, Dr. Alfred Bothwell, relocated to the University of Arizona from Yale University in June 2021. I joined the lab as his first University of Arizona postdoc in December 2021. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, I originally moved to Tucson in August 2019. During my graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati, where I obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Systems Biology and Physiology, I studied metaplasia and regeneration in gastric tissue under the mentorship of Dr. Yana Zavros. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to relocate with Dr. Zavros when she moved to the University of Arizona and was granted permission by my graduate program to complete my dissertation research remotely, in Tucson. I graduated in December 2021. Although studying biological factors that drive metaplastic changes initially sparked my interest in cancer, it was the death of a loved one from metastatic lung cancer that ultimately solidified my determination to pursue cancer research.
 
The immunosuppressive environment of aggressive cancers is a significant barrier to effective and comprehensive treatment. Furthermore, there is no clear diagnostic evaluation to determine if a primary tumor will become metastatic. Elevated expression of the Wnt antagonist Dkk-1 (Dickkopf WNT signaling pathway inhibitor 1) transmembrane protein has been detected in the sera and tumor tissues of patients, in various cancer types, including those resistant to immunotherapy. Presence of Dkk-1 in tumor tissue is also associated with poor prognosis. Dkk-1 inhibits beta-catenin-dependent Wnt signaling and is involved in embryogenesis and development. Although previous research from our laboratory suggests that Dkk-1 may also have a role in tumor cell proliferation and regulates immune cell activity by inducing inflammation, the mechanism by which it does so is unclear. One research focus of our laboratory is trogocytosis. In trogocytosis (in Greek, “trogo” means gnawing or nibbling), one cell “gnaws off” part of the plasma membrane of another cell. This transfer allows a cell to acquire non-native surface proteins from other cells. My current hypothesis is that overexpression of Dkk-1 in tumors creates an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment by facilitating the transfer of immune cell markers to tumor cells by trogocytosis and contributes to cancer metastasis. By elucidating the mechanism by which Dkk-1 promotes immunotherapy resistance and metastasis, I hope to gain a better understanding of how the tumor microenvironment impacts patient prognosis.
 
One of the models I used to study metaplasia, and now use to study metastasis, is the organoid model. Unlike cell lines, organoids are three-dimensional cellular structures that are formed from the stem cells of a particular organ. The stem cells recapitulate the differentiated cells and basic functional units of the organ or tissue they are isolated from. I culture organoids generated from human and mouse tumor tissues. From a tissue resection or a biopsy of a patient, we can generate organoids and perform in vitro experiments. For example, organoids can be co-cultured with different immune cells to determine which immune cells have the greatest impact on tumor proliferation and persistence. The strength of the organoid model is its physiological significance. We can observe in real-time how the cells and by extension, the organ will be affected. Organoids allow us to study how a tumor will respond to a drug or stressor. This gives researchers and clinicians a better prediction of how a patient will respond to different treatments and how additional factors such as immune cells or acquired proteins can affect the cancer cells. Cancers that I am currently researching are pancreatic, lung, and colorectal cancer. I hope to extend my research to breast and ovarian cancer, with a focus on health disparities in cancer treatment.
 
I am not only passionate about exploring the intricacies of cancer metastasis but also driven to help increase the number of underrepresented groups in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). We need more diverse representation within the patient populations we work with in research and more diversity among the scientists and clinicians that study cancer. As the first in my family to graduate from college and become a doctor, first in my family to be born in the United States (my family is from Ghana), being an African American woman, having a disability that is not visible and growing up with a socio-economically disadvantaged background, I have encountered several hurdles along my path to becoming a scientist. I understand why others who have had similar experiences can be deterred from pursuing STEMM fields. I use the knowledge I’ve gained from my experiences to help others to succeed and thrive in their own pursuits. In the past, I’ve encouraged my fellow students to major in mathematics, physics, and other STEMM fields of study. In graduate school as president of the SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science) Cincinnati chapter and regional director for Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio of the Student National Medical Association, I participated in several community outreach projects focused on science and health education.  As a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., I continue to raise awareness about health disparities in our local communities and encourage participation of underrepresented groups in the All of Us Research Program. Currently, I am a member of the Women in Physiology Committee of the American Physiological Society, continue to mentor students in my lab here at the University of Arizona and students at the University of Cincinnati, speak on panels about diversity in science, raise awareness about science and medicine through social media, and serve as a poster judge at conferences such as SACNAS and ABRCMS (Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists). My long-term career goals are to continue my development as a translational scientist, address health disparities through my research, and serve as an ambassador for diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and medicine.
 
You can connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter (@MarthaDu).  To learn more about our lab and our past and current research projects, visit our lab website at https://immunobiology.arizona.edu/research/bothwell-lab and our lab Twitter (@Bothwell_Lab). 

Many of us have noticed lately that prices of many products have skyrocketed. The world is facing an unprecedented energy crisis because it heavily depends on fossil fuels that have become scarce due to the COVID-19 struggles and geopolitical tensions. At the heart of this problem lies the slow energy transition that needs to transform the global energy sector from fossil-based to zero-carbon. Decarbonization will be critical not only to supply the continuously increasing energy demand, but more importantly to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions to limit climate change. The only solution will be a combination of various renewable energy technologies going from photovoltaic cells to batteries and solar fuels. Fundamentally, most of these technologies are based on (photo)electrochemical processes, which is my main scientific background.

My passion for science, and chemistry more specifically, and curiosity for the unknown started right after high school and it has been a constant motivation throughput my career since then. As a result, I received my PhD in 2015 at Ghent University in Belgium by developing new corrosion protection treatments for metallic objects, gaining expertise in different fields going from electrochemistry and surface analysis to materials science. After my PhD, I had to make one of the hardest decisions in my life when I left my family to accept an offer for a postdoctoral position sponsored by the Office of Naval Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Reynolds Research Group. Next to adapting a completely new lifestyle, I also switched from working with metals to semiconductors, which geared my research to the world of semiconductor electrochemistry. I quickly realized that the fundamentals for many renewable technologies required an often ignored and/or incorrectly used deep electrochemical background, which started my crusade for teaching the correct science to students. Thrown in the world of conjugated polymers, I engineered novel transparent electrodes and device structures for electrochromic devices but was also involved in understanding ion-electron conducting mechanisms, internal resistances and charging effects within redox-active devices for applications such as supercapacitors and switchable elements for frequency-agile antennas. I am convinced that this work in combination with absorbing much of the knowledge from other group members on organic photovoltaics, conjugated polymer synthesis and device manufacturing makes me to the mature scientist I am today.

​In 2020, I decided to move even further west to the University of Arizona to work under the supervision of Dr. Erin Ratcliff and Dr. Neal Armstrong on the electrochemical processes within optoelectronic devices to solve stability, manufacturing, and characterization problems, which remain the main issue for their further commercialization. Critical to understand degradation processes, I have been developing electrochemical approaches to study the defect (electro)chemistry in material and device stacks with unprecedented detection limits under operating conditions. Overall, the advanced electrochemical characterization platform we created is crucial towards the search for low cost, improved and stable (opto)electronic materials to realize industry-scalable technologies in the field of photovoltaics, charge storage systems, photoelectrochemical cells, etc. This platform I developed has led me to improve my experiences as an inventor and to start competing for research funding. My goal is to pursue highly impactful studies that will help and accelerate the development of renewable technologies to reach our 100% clean energy future.

Dr. Jules Moutet received the Honorable Mention for the 2022 Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award.

Dr. Lila Wollman received the Honorable Mention for the 2022 Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award.

​I have always been naturally curious growing up in Arizona, so it is no wonder I ended up pursuing a career as a scientist.  I used to have jars of insects in my room, let my lunch items mold just to observe the changes, and was always outside making lists of birds, plants, and rocks. So I was lucky my mother put up with my curiosities and let me buy lots of books on different subjects growing up. My mother helped support my passions in life and as I got older I was inspired by my mentors from different programs like Si Se Puede Foundation and Arizona State University’s Los Diablos.  I saw people leading change in the community and people with similar cultural experiences as mine being Latinx clinicians and professors. I think it was a culmination of these things that really motivated me to pursue a career in science, to eventually be that person for others as well, and is part of my path that led me back here to University of Arizona. 
 
I recently defended my Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia this summer. My graduate work was centered on microbiome research working with VCU’s Vaginal Microbiome Consortium (VMC). My research for the VMC encompassed comparative genomics of cervicovaginal bacteria especially Bifidobacterium species, understanding correlations between the cervicovaginal microbiome in reproductive health and disease, as well as maternal-infant microbial transmission and toddler health progression. I joined Dr. Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz’s lab at University of Arizona’s College of Medicine-Phoenix July 2021 and have been using both my passion for advocacy work and science to assist with my research on the cervicovaginal microbiome.
 
 I am currently facilitating research as a postdoctoral researcher investigating the cervicovaginal microbiome and its role in endometrial cancer and gynecologic conditions like endometriosis. Specifically, I am utilizing my skills in microbiome analysis, microbial genomics, computational biology to better understand potential oncogenic bacteria and beneficial bacteria like Lactobacillus and their contributions to the cervicovaginal microenvironment in health and disease. I am also assisting in a collaborative project between Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz and Dr. Greg Caporaso’s group, creator of the popular Qiime2 microbiome software, from Northern Arizona University to look at the microbiome’s role in endometrial cancer, I am specifically analyzing the low-microbial biomass body site of the endometrium to validate our findings of this site. I am delighted to be part of Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz’s lab as we are currently using multi-omic approaches with immunoproteomics, metabolomics, and genomics in conjunction with the lab’s 3-D human cell models and large clinical studies to set the foundation for creation of innovative microbial biomarker diagnostics. In addition, our lab’s societal goals of expediting the research pipeline from bench to bedside tries to focus on health disparities within gynecologic conditions in context to Arizona’s diverse populations with many studies focusing on the Hispanic/Latinx, Native American, Aging communities. Thanks to Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz’s mentorship and collaboration, I was recently awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona to begin work on studying three new bacteria that were recently classified as Atopobium vaginae, a key vaginal bacteria linked to the most common vaginal disorder bacterial vaginosis, that has also recently been associated with cervical and endometrial cancers. We hypothesize that there are different cancer-causing contributions amongst these three novel vaginal bacteria. Our first goal of this project is to analyze the “cancer-causing” potential of these newly identified bacteria using a well-characterized 3-D human endocervical cell model in the lab. While our second goal is to evaluate the clinical phenotypic presentation and microbiome relationship of these novel bacteria in two previously collected cervical and endometrial cancer cohorts. Potential clinical and immunometabolic differences seen from this study could impact early diagnostics and future clinical care of gynecologic cancers and provide insight into potential oncogenic mechanisms of bacteria that inhabit the cervicovaginal environment.
 
While much of my time is dedicated to my research, I also like to be heavily involved in different advocacy initiatives on and off campus. During my time at ASU (undergrad) and VCU(grad), I began advocating for science, STEM education, diversity, and mental health and well-being for the campus. These outside activities have taught me the importance of inclusivity in research and dissemination of science to the public. Although plenty busy with my research and advocacy work, I find time to unwind by playing intramural sports like dodgeball, hiking, crafting cocktails, cooking, reading, and being a cat mom. Want to chat about science or why Arizona is a great state, reach out via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimeneznr/) or follow me on Instagram(@Prettyfly4asci) and Twitter(@ScientistNicole).
 
 

​My main research interest is autonomous systems and robotics as well as simulation technologies in medicine. During my Ph.D. studies and the postdoc period at the University of Arizona, I have mainly focused on development of medical robotic systems especially for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) training. MIS has been widely performed in the last three decades and is integrated into modern day surgical practice. Its advantages are widely acknowledged, with benefits of minimizing blood loss, post-operative pain, and reducing recovery time. However, this surgical technique is more challenging than open surgery and has a steeper learning curve. This is due to the need for special surgical instruments, laparoscopes and logistical issues of viewing the 3 dimensional (3D) operating field on a 2 dimensional (2D) digital display. Given the complexity of learning and performing MIS, it is required to develop novel simulation-based training systems which enhance training procedures in non-patient based settings.
I have been developing a novel training system called Computer-Assisted Surgical Trainer (CAST) for laparoscopic surgical skills training with my supervisor, Dr. Jerzy W. Rozenblit, through the NSF grant in Smart and Connected Health Program. As a lead researcher, I designed a visual and force guidance system as well as an assessment system to actively assist a trainee. Given a specific training task, CAST can provide visual and force guidance to assist a trainee using augmented reality (AR) rendering to convey depth information and fuzzy adaptive sliding mode controllers to adjust force feedback based on a trainee’s performance, respectively. Also, a scoring system with achievable goal-based evaluation metrics such as total time, idle time, average speed, path length, and direction profile has been developed to evaluate trainees’ performance objectively.
Currently, I am designing a “virtual coaching” system which provides personalized learning programs tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses for both standard laparoscopic surgery training and robotic surgery training. Computer-assistance in the form of guidance for manipulation of robotic arms or standard laparoscopic surgery instruments can be a step forward towards virtual coaching systems and, subsequently, improved and more efficient training. The novel guidance systems will ultimately improve patients’ safety as well as surgeons’ skills acquisition and maintenance.
During my master’s degree studies, I developed a mobile robot for mobile haptic interface in large immersive virtual environments. Based on the human-machine interaction research outcomes with current research outcomes in medicine, I am pursuing a robotic nursing assistant system through a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in many ways. Especially, in hospitals, we may need robotic systems to assist healthcare workers by minimizing workers exposure to patients with the highly contagious virus. A robotic nursing assistant is envisioned to be an intelligent system which consists of sensing, perception, and actuation layers. The initial research of the robotic nursing system will be a basis for the future research. The novel robotic systems are not limited to medical domain but can also be applied for various applications such as space exploration and rescue operations. 

​Organic pollutants (dyes, pesticides, explosives, pharmaceuticals, etc.) are constantly released into the environment due to human activities. Many of these compounds are xenobiotics, which means that microorganisms in nature have never seen them before (please, imagine Mariah Carey's "I don't know her" meme). Luckily, some microorganisms can adapt to this major inconvenience. For example, enzymes used for naturally occurring substrates can end up degrading a new contaminant in the environment. Alternatively, microorganisms can evolve and develop new specific enzymes to do that. However, microbes are not alone in nature or engineered systems (e.g., a biological reactor treating wastewater). Instead, they are surrounded – and affected to – by other microorganisms, water, nutrients, inert or reactive minerals, natural organic matter, gases, etc.  The organic contaminants and their biotransformation products (i.e., whatever the microbes transformed the contaminants to) can also react with these other components, affecting the contaminants' environmental fate and generating final products with different toxicity levels. Most of my experimental work (yes, it does involve long hours working at the lab bench) consists of breaking these complex environments into smaller pieces, which we call microcosms, to discover what chemical and biological phenomena are occurring after a new compound gets released in the environment. My research philosophy is to generate solutions to remediate environmental contamination by organic pollutants and, in the process, to find out how nature works.
This whole scientific journey started as a kid in my parents' backyard when I observed that the water with red ink that I had exhaustively extracted from a marker pencil became clear after passing it through a pot with soil (poor plants!). Years later, more formally, during my graduate studies at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil), I initially worked with the treatment of azo dyes, which are largely released by the fashion industry in many aquatic environments. I optimized oxygen injection in a biological reactor to transform heavily contaminated textile wastewater into a non-toxic effluent. Next, I worked with the environmental remediation of explosive contaminants released on the soil by military activities, especially in four different topics: the ability of some reactive minerals in the soils and aquatic sediments to degrade explosives; the unusual phenomenon of soil bacteria making a living breathing an explosive; the (bio)degradation of a product of explosives compounds in contaminated wastewater; and the oligomerization reactions that lock the contaminant inside complex humic substances, which is a safe dead-end for some explosives in the environment.
During my postdoc at the University of Arizona, where I am supervised by Dr. Jim A. Field and Dr. Reyes Sierra-Alvarez, I am currently investigating the remediation of nitro-aromatics (including but not limited to explosives) using the soil natural organic matter's ability to shuttle electrons between biological and chemical systems in subsurface environments. The intense knowledge exchange with the brilliant people in the research group has made my research life fulfilling. Furthermore, it is evident to me how the new challenges and responsibilities as a postdoc are quickly preparing me for my career.