FOCUS in Sound

Staphylococcus aureus is probably the most important bacterial pathogen affecting the public health of Americans. Staph is the leading cause of pus-forming skin and soft tissue infections, the leading cause of infectious heart disease, the number one hospital-acquired infection, and one of the four leading causes of food-borne illness. MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staph aureus, is a highly virulent form of the infection, and accounts for more deaths annually in the US than HIV/AIDS. And of course the spread of MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections is becoming a major public health crisis in America. Joining us by phone on this edition of Focus in Sound, my guest, Dr. Eric Skaar, is fighting back. He was named an Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2006. Much of his lab’s research concentrates on Staph aureus, and he and his team have come up with some important new knowledge about Staph and the host-pathogen interface—findings that may lead to new approaches to treatment of Staph infections.

One of the keys to ultimately conquering disease and extending the healthy lifespans of human beings is going to be to advance and refine our understanding of the machinery of living cells. Our guest on this edition of FOCUS In Sound, Dr. John York, has done as much as any scientist in the last two decades to contribute to knowledge of cellular processes, particularly in the area of inositol signaling, which has emerged as a critical factor in the regulation of a wide variety of biochemical phenomena, including calcium release, membrane trafficking, channel activity, nuclear function, and more. John holds a dual appointment at Duke University, where he is a Cancer Biology Professor of Pharmacology and a Professor of Biochemistry. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. In 1995, he was one of the original recipients of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences.

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we focus on a dynamic scientist from UCLA who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see how that recognition has had a profound effect on her work, her career, and her scientific contributions.

This special edition of FOCUS In Sound is a panel discussion on career development from the Fund's headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina on October 10, 2018, during the Networking Meeting for New Awardees.

Program Officer Alfred Mays Provides Insight into the Career Awards for Science and Mathematics Teachers

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we focus on an outstanding teacher, Andi Webb, who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see what impact that recognition has had on her career, her teaching, and her life.

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we check in with Dr. John Burris, President of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, for an annual report in sound for the Fund for 2017. It was quite a significant year in many ways for the Fund, where John has been president since 2008.

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we check in with Dr. John Burris, President of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, for an annual report in sound for the Fund for 2016. It was a momentous year in so many ways, including for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, where John has been president since 2008.

In this edition of FOCUS in Sound, we meet Dr. Todd Boyette, who is the director of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. More importantly for our purposes on this program, he is also one of the co-founders of the North Carolina Science Festival, an annual event strongly supported for many years by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

In 2009, Claudia received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Science and Mathematics Teachers, a $175,000 grant over the course of five years designed to give outstanding North Carolina classroom teachers resources to enhance professional development and collaboration with other teachers. With that five years wrapping up in 2014, we thought it would be a good time to check in and take stock with Claudia, and recognize her noteworthy achievements in mathematics education.

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet Dr. Pardis Sabeti, a geneticist who won a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences in 2005, and has gone on to enjoy a very distinguished career, culminating this year in being named one of the 100 Most Influential People in America by TIME Magazine. That recognition follows her inclusion as one of TIME’s Persons of the Year in 2014, celebrating her role as an Ebola fighter. Although Pardis has a long list of accomplishments in her years of research on the genetics of infectious diseases, for this edition of Focus In Sound we want to concentrate on the incredible story of her work on Ebola. I’m sure everyone will recall how Ebola nearly spun out of control in 2014, threatening a worldwide epidemic. That didn’t happen, fortunately, but the deadly disease claimed more than ten thousand lives in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia before it was finally reined in by the heroic efforts of thousands of dedicated workers. By rapidly sequencing the genomes of the Ebola Virus Disease particles present in the blood of dozens of West African victims, Pardis and her colleagues at the Broad Institute in Massachusetts played a central role in determining where the outbreak came from, how it was evolving, where it was likely to go, and how to bring it under control.

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a quantitative biologist who studies the structure and dynamics of complex biological systems. Most recently, he organized and chaired a two-day, so-called “rapid response” workshop called Modeling the Spread and Control of Ebola in West Africa. The meeting, which drew 180 participants from all over the world, was held in January, 2015 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where Joshua Weitz is a tenured associate professor of biology.

On this edition of Focus In Sound, we bring you a special treat. In May 2015, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund celebrated its 60th anniversary with a series of events at the Fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. On May 20th, the Fund welcomed approximately 100 guests to a dinner held out in the building’s courtyard. After that dinner, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. George Langford from Syracuse University, who has been a member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Board since 2008.

On this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we welcome a scientist who explores the way the brain encodes information about the world around us – she combines computational and biological approaches to study the mechanisms behind the transformation of sensory representations. Dr. Maria N. Geffen is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery and Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2008, when she was still at Rockefeller, she received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, a $500,000 grant designed to help bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first three years of faculty service.

On this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we’re going to learn about a devastating infectious pathogen – Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacterium with incredible staying power and, unfortunately, considerable killing power as well. Although we might think of it as a somewhat old-fashioned disease, tuberculosis is still an enormous global health problem, with 15 million new cases every year and as many as 3 million deaths worldwide. Also, up to one-third of the world’s population, that is, as many as 2 billion people may be latently infected with tuberculosis. Despite the many advances in biomedical research over the past several decades, it is still the case that very little is known about how the tuberculosis bacterium works. Joining us on FOCUS In Sound is a young investigator who is working to change that by conducting basic research on the tuberculosis bacterium. By characterizing the pathogenesis of the disease and enhancing the ability to diagnose it, the ultimate goal of her group’s work is nothing less than the ultimate eradication of this infectious scourge. Dr. Sarah Fortune is the Melvin J. and Geraldine L. Glimcher Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. In 2012, she was the recipient of a 5-year, $500,000 grant as one of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease.

On this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we focus on research on a devastating disease that threatens millions of people in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa—Human African Trypanosomiasis, better known as African Sleeping Sickness. It’s caused by a parasite transmitted to the bloodstream of mammalian hosts by the bite of an insect vector, in this case, the tsetse fly. As with malaria and other insect-borne parasitic diseases, elucidating the complex mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and transmission of the disease is critical to understanding how to fight it. Joining us on FOCUS In Sound today is a young investigator who is doing just that, conducting basic biomolecular research on the parasites called trypanosomes. His group’s work may lead to new therapies for a condition that hasn’t seen significant progress in treatment for a long time. Dr. Kent Hill is professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA. He was named a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases in 2008, with the five-year award funding his research into cell-to-cell communication and social motility in the pathogenesis and development of African trypanosomes.

On this edition of Focus in Sound, we meet a young investigator who is conducting groundbreaking basic research to characterize how the brain coordinates our movements and how it operates when we’re making decisions. These are both very basic but complex neural operations, and understanding their mechanisms will not only shed light on brain function, but will contribute to development of brain-machine interfaces. Dr. Bijan Pesaran of New York University received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences in 2004, which funded his study on cortical mechanisms for hand-eye coordination. He has been on the faculty at NYU since 2006, where he is an Assistant Professor of Neural Sciences at the Center for Neural Science.

On this edition of Focus In Sound, we meet a young investigator who is making significant contributions to our basic knowledge of cell signaling pathways, cell death mechanisms, innate immunity, infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders. Dr. Maya Saleh of McGill University was named an Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2009. Maya received her Ph.D. at McGill in 2001, served post-docs at Merck and the La Jolla Institute, and in 2005 returned to McGill to join the faculty. She is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Biochemistry and Director of the Inflammation and Cancer Program. She is also an Associate Member in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, an Associate Member of the Goodman Cancer Centre, and a member of the Center for the Study of Host Resistance and the Division of Critical Care of the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute.

Engaging children in science has been a prime objective of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund since it became an independent, private foundation in 1994. The Fund operates on the principle that all children, regardless of their future career path, need basic science literacy to participate fully in civic life. One of the Fund’s long-standing grant-making activities puts that principle into practice. The Student Science Enrichment Program, or SSEP, which has been supporting informal science education programs across the state of North Carolina since 1996, provides more than $3 million annually to support creative science education activities for primary and secondary students in North Carolina. The SSEP is informal science education at its best, with a major emphasis on hands-on, inquiry-based activities. On this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we pay a visit to the SSEP Directors and Advisory Committee’s Annual Meeting, which took place August 11, 2010 at the Fund’s headquarters at Research Triangle Park. The gathering is an opportunity for the individual grantees to present their programs and results to the advisory committee members, and for everyone to interact, exchange ideas, and engage in career development activities.

What is the biology of fear, the emotional response that drives so much behavior in humans and animals alike? Our guest on this edition of FOCUS In Sound, Dr. Kerry Ressler, is determined to answer that question, and in doing so to help the millions of people who suffer from fear-based disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder. Kerry is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience in Atlanta, and directs the Grady Trauma Project, which is a major study of the gene-environment interactions underlying post-traumatic stress disorder, which involves patients at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. In 2006, he received a five-year Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research. In 2007, he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Kerry’s lab at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory is focused on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of fear learning and the process of extinction of fear in mouse models. He hopes that by understanding how fear works in the brain, it will improve our understanding of and advance treatments for fear-based disorders.