On Monday, April 30th, more than 70 research faculty, trainees, and staff gathered together in the Hale Building for Transformative Medicine for the BRI’s annual Cores and Resources Fair. The fair is an opportunity for core facilities, as well as other entities that support the research mission, to showcase various resources available to the research community. The event offers a chance for all attendees, including the core representatives themselves, to create connections and conversations about the work they do and to explore potential collaborations. This year, 16 tables featured resources that spanned disciplines and educated interested community members on the vast number of tools and technologies available through cores such as the BRI Single Cell Genomics Core, Metabolic Core and the Survey and Data Management Core. Additionally, research staff members each received a gift as a small token of appreciation for their hard work and dedication to research at Brigham.
Category: Event Recap
The Brigham Research Institute (BRI) hosted a group of post-doctoral fellows and research leadership for an open discussion of the various opportunities and resources available to post-docs. The event aimed to learn more about the needs and concerns of researchers at this specific rank, while offering a chance for post-docs to provide feedback directly to the BRI Executive Committee. The conversation touched on ongoing initiatives, mentoring programs, funding for research, and career development. This luncheon highlighted the resources available through the Brigham Research Institute, the Development Office, and the Office of Research Careers, as well as highlighting specific individuals to get in touch with should further questions arise. Post-docs were encouraged to take advantage of the numerous opportunities for engagement including the BRI’s new Research Roundtables: Dialogues and Discussions (R2D2) series, which is organized around research interests, as well as thematic sessions like the upcoming Lung Research Symposium and the Cardio Renal Research Symposium, both of which offer opportunities for post-docs to represent their work and earn recognition awards. Post-docs noted that there is a need for more career development seminars and workshops, which will be available through the Office for Research Careers and the office for Research Education going forward. Forums such as these are a component of a strong support system at BWH that postdocs can rely on when facing challenges.
Brigham staff joined local families, students and community members in the Hale Building for Transformative Medicine to experience science in an interactive way on April 19. As part of this year’s Cambridge Science Festival, the Brigham Research Institute (BRI) hosted a “science fair,” providing attendees an up-close look at cutting-edge projects at the Brigham.
“This science fair was a great success, drawing in an impressive crowd of all ages and interests and giving our remarkable researchers a chance to showcase their incredible work,” said Jacqueline M. Slavik, PhD, executive director of the BRI.
The event featured hands-on demonstrations to make science interesting and accessible for everyone from scientists to young children. The Pediatric/Newborn Medicine Research table combined education and entertainment with various brain science activities, including an arts-and-crafts station.
Another exhibit, Gas Man, used a computer simulation to show attendees the path of anesthesia uptake and distribution throughout the body. The Zebrafish Core Facility hosted a table where guests could learn about how these miniscule water-dwellers are used in laboratories to study behavior, diabetes, heart disease, regeneration, stem cell biology and cancer.
Visitors crowded around the Tactical Neurosurgical Team’s interactive demonstration of the head-mounted mixed reality navigation system. An augmented and virtual reality display also drew in a mass of people, all vying for the chance to try out the medical imaging device, which is used to view and annotate imaging scans.
Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, PhD, of the Division of Sleep Medicine, led several meditative yoga sessions based in science, allowing those who participated to find a sense of inner peace within their busy, everyday lives. Finally, the Drinker Iron Lung, whose roots trace back to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, stood as a notable piece of history in medicine and science. Even as it was wheeled down the halls of the hospital in advance of the fair, it was a showstopper. Jeffrey Drazen, MD, chief of the Division of Medical Communications, presented the device’s history as people gathered to see – and even climb inside – a machine that saved the lives of countless polio victims starting in 1929.
On Monday, March 26th, clinicians and researchers convened at the 7th Annual Obesity Incubator Session hosted by the Cardiovascular, Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders (CVDM) Research Center of the Brigham Research Institute to address the significant challenges associated with this public health crisis. The goal of the event was to promote cross-collaborative research and stimulate new ideas for further investigation in the fields of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
Keynote speaker, Dr. Rudy Leibel, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine and Director of the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center at Columbia University, has focused his research on the genetics of obesity and noninsulin-dependent diabetes. He delivered a thought provoking presentation describing the innovative methods his lab has employed using stem cells to elucidate the genetic basis of human metabolic diseases. Special guest speaker, Dr. Rachel Carmody, Assistant Professor in Human Evolutionary Biology and Director of the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Laboratory at Harvard University, captivated audiences with her research on the gut microbiome and how it responds to diet. Her unique perspective and approach to understanding human metabolism considers the human body as an ecosystem and combines experimental techniques from evolutionary biology, nutrition, physiology, microbiology, and metagenomics.
To begin this 7th Annual Obesity Incubator, Dr. Leibel and Dr. Carmody’s presentations were preceded by three short talks selected from the research community: Instructor, Deirdre Tobias, Sc.D., from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Assistant Professor, Laura Holsen, Ph.D. from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Postdoctoral Fellow, J. Humberto Trevino-Villarreal, M.D., Ph.D., from Harvard School of Public Health.
The subsequent poster session featured 21 research projects from assistant professors, instructors, and postdoctoral researchers/clinical fellows. These posters displayed current work in obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, drawing in a large crowd of people that initiated many enthusiastic conversations among the scientific community. While the judges had a hard decision to make with the impressive breadth of abstracts, they, ultimately, chose to award three researchers that stood out among the rest; Postdoctoral Fellow Jingyi Qian, Ph.D. from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Postdoctoral Fellow Mehmet Furkan Burak, M.D. from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and Instructor Samir Softic, M.D. from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Agenda
Invited Speakers
Dietary sensitivity of the gut microbiome: considerations for metabolic disease
Rachel Carmody, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Stem cell-based strategies to elucidate human metabolic disease
Rudolph L. Leibel, MD., Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, Columbia University
Selected Speakers
Circulating Branched-Chain Amino Acids and Incident Cardiovascular Disease in a Prospective Cohort of US Women
Deirdre K. Tobias*, Patrick R. Lawler, Paulo H. Harada, Olga V. Demler, Paul M Ridker, JoAnn E. Manson, Susan Cheng, Samia Mora
Hypothalamic and nucleus accumbens cerebral blood flow vary as a function of long-term carbohydrate-to-fat ratio diets
Laura M. Holsen*, Hilal Cerit, Belinda Lennerz, Scott Hoge, Taryn Hye, Priyanka Moondra, Jill M. Goldstein, Cara B. Ebbeling, and David Ludwig
Activation of an hepatic CREBH-ApoA5 axis increases peripheral VLDL-triglyceride clearance in response to dietary protein restriction
J Humberto Treviño-Villarreal*, Justin Reynolds, Alex Bartelt, Kent Langston, Michael MacArthur, Sarah Mitchell, Kaspar Trocha, Joerg Heeren, C. Keith Ozaki, Luigi Fontana, and James R. Mitchell
Poster Winners
Sex differences in the effects of circadian misalignment on appetite hormones and substrate utilization
Jingyi Qian*, Rosanna Caputo, Christopher J Morris, Frank AJL Scheer
A Monoclonal anti- aP2 Antibody treats type 2 diabetes and Fatty Liver Disease
M. Furkan Burak*, Karen Inouye, Ariel White, Alexandra Lee, Gurol Tuncman, Ediz S. Calay, Motohiro Sekiya, Amir Tirosh, Kosei Eguchi, Gabriel Birrane, Helen Neale, Carl Doyle, Adrian Moore, and Gökhan S. Hotamisligil
Dietary Sugars Alter Fatty Acid Oxidation and Mitochondrial Function in Part Via Hyperacetylation of Mitochondrial Proteins in Liver
Samir Softic*, Jesse G. Meyer, Guo-Xiao Wang, Manoj K. Gupta, Hans P.M.M. Lauritzen, Shiho Fujisaka, Dolors Serra, Laura Herrero, Jennifer Willoughby, Kevin Fitzgerald, Olga Ilkayeva, Christopher B. Newgard, Bradford W. Gibson, Birgit Schilling, David E. Cohen, C. Ronald Kahn.
*Denotes that this person was the poster presenter/speaker
[vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Brigham Research Institute (BRI) hosted a welcome lunch for its 2017 summer undergraduate research interns on Tue, June 6th. Four BRI research centers – the Cardiovascular, Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders Research Center (CVDM), the Infectious & Immunologic Diseases (IID) Research Center, the Musculoskeletal Research Center (MSK) and the Neurosciences Research Center (NRC) are together sponsoring a total of 15 interns this year. This represents a 3-fold increase in the number of students from last year when the program was launched. Participating host labs this year from the different Centers include those of:
Drs. Ana Anderson, Anuj Bellare, Lynn Bry, Karen Costenbader, Mark Feinberg, Julie Glowacki, Melissa St. Hilaire, Keith Ozaki , Andrew Phillips, Eric Sheu, Indranil Sinha, Ali Tavakkoli, Jessica Whited, Tracy Young-Pearse, Joe Zhou
The interns are coming to BWH from various institutions in the U.S including:[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”19914″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”link_image” qode_css_animation=””][vc_column_text]Bates College, Boston College, Boston University, Bowdoin College, Carleton College , Clemson University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Hunter College, Lehigh University, Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Pennsylvania State University, Tufts University and the University of Florida[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”15px”][vc_empty_space height=”15px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dr. Mark Feinberg, CoChair, CVDM Center delivered the welcome remarks at the lunch which was an opportunity for the interns and their host lab representatives to meet each other. The interns will commence their 10-week internship today. At the end of the internship period, the BRI will host an electronic poster session (Thu, Aug 10th ) to showcase the research performed by the interns during their time at BWH. The BRI Summer Research Internship Program provides undergraduate students with a focused and challenging research experience in a cutting-edge science laboratory in either basic, clinical or translational research with the goal of nurturing the next generation of researchers and clinician scientists[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_gallery interval=”3″ images=”19902,19903,19904,19899,19895,19893,19892,19897,19891,19900,19896,19905″ img_size=”full”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Friday, April 28, 2017
The Cardiovascular, Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders (CVDM) Research Center hosted their sixth annual obesity incubator session on Friday, April 28th, 1 – 4PM. The goal of this session is to bring together BWH clinicians and researchers working in the fields of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, to address this challenging public health crisis by promoting cross-collaborative research efforts and stimulating new ideas for further investigation.
Copy from old site.
April 3, 2017 – Cabot Atrium
Faculty and trainees came together for the Lung Research Center’s annual symposium on Monday, April 3rd to highlight lung research from across the Brigham, including the Channing Division of Network Medicine, the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and the division of Thoracic Surgery.
Keynoting the event was Scott T. Weiss, MD, Scientific Director of Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine, who encouraged junior investigators to move beyond the specific scientific fields in which they were trained to acquire the necessary skills to take on large, interdisciplinary projects. Dr. Weiss’ tour de force into the effects of Vitamin D on diseases such as asthma and preeclampsia was built on research spanning the gap from basic to clinical research in the fields of genetics, bioinformatics, epidemiology and immunology.
Highlighting the power of such comprehensive studies, Dr. Weiss reminded everyone that “…in 2000, when the human genome was mapped, Dr. Claude Lenfant, then Director of NHLBI, said that asthma would never be prevented. Today, 17 years later, we are on the verge of doing just that.”
Scott T. Weiss, MD, Scientific Director, Mass General Brigham Personalized Medicine
The poster session, featuring 38 research projects from junior faculty and trainees drew a large and enthusiastic crowd. Among all the outstanding work that was presented, three researchers stood out and were awarded with a $1000 cash prize: Patrick Burkett, MD, PhD, Instructor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine; Rachel Kelly, PhD, Research Fellow in the Channing Division of Network Medicine; and Moshe Lapidot, MD, Research Fellow in Thoracic Surgery.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016, 5PM, Cabot Atrium
The Brigham Research Institute (BRI) capped off a decade of supporting discovery and innovation last week with a celebration honoring its community and accomplishments. At a reception in Cabot Atrium on June 1, 2016, members of the research community gathered to share food and drink and hear remarks from the BRI’s past and current directors.
“The Brigham Research Institute was originally conceived of as an experiment. Today, it is a powerful force of collaboration.”
Thomas Kupper, MD, Chair, Department of Dermatology, Inaugural Director of the Brigham Research Institute
Kupper highlighted research funding programs, such as the Fund to Sustain Research Excellence (FSRE), which provides interim support to sustain research projects that are likely to receive federal funding in the future. Through the FSRE, the BRI has distributed more than $6 million to 95 investigators. In turn, award recipients have used that to attain more than $200 million in funding.
“I’m proud to have launched the Fund to Sustain Research Excellence (FSRE) and to have been on the committee that hired our Executive Director, Jacqueline M. Slavik, PhD, MMSc.
Thomas Kupper, MD, Chair, Department of Dermatology, Inaugural Director of the Brigham Research Institute
In total, the BRI has distributed more than $10 million in awards since 2006 through the FSRE, micro-grants and other competitive funding programs, such as the BRI Director’s $500K Transformative Award, BRIght Futures Fund and BWH Health & Technology Innovation Fund.
Slavik, who has served as executive director since the BRI launched, introduced each of the BRI’s past and present directors, including Kupper, Cynthia Morton, PhD, Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD (in absentia), Christine Seidman, PhD, and Richard Blumberg, MD, who highlighted milestones and achievements from their tenure as directors.
During the celebration, attendees were encouraged to submit one-word answers to the question, “What does the BRI mean to you?” By providing this feedback to the BRI, attendees could be entered into a raffle for prizes.
Poster Winners
- Adel El-Boueiz, Research Fellow, Medicine PCCM
- Ho Pan Sham, Postdoctoral Fellow, Medicine
- Cristian Valenzuela, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Thoracic Surgery