Dr. Kwon’s research investigates the role of resilience variables in how stigmatized individuals, particularly LGBTQ and ethnic minority individuals, cope with environmental stressors. His work examines the ways in which people can thrive and succeed despite prejudice and stigma, leading to interventions and prevention efforts to foster resilience in these populations.
M. Rashed Khan
Khan Lab@UNR aims to study, design, and develop soft materials, unconventional processes, and reconfigurable micro/nanodevices that can be harnessed and optimized further for advanced biochemical, biomedical, and physicochemical applications. The lab is also keen to establish a multidisciplinary smart-manufacturing research group, including researchers from various backgrounds. Through short and long-term active collaboration, Khan Lab@UNR would like to address fundamental challenges associated with soft micro-device fabrication, 3D/4D (bio)printing, and patterning, advanced hybrid sensor manufacturing, biomedical device development – which are still unnoticed and under-explored, and need further investigation.
Additionally, our group also focuses on computational neuroscience and neurobioengineering. Under this research direction, we study human brain, brain functions, brain structure so that the established knowledge can be broadly applicable to general biomecical science and knowledge of the brain and brain-diseases.
Jenny Ouyang
How do some individuals in the same population raise ten offspring while others only have one? How do some individuals survive cold winters and breed again while others do not live past their first winter? Our lab is interested in the ecology and evolution of physiological systems. To answer the questions above, we empirically test, in natural and laboratory populations, how, and at what rate, physiologically-regulated traits can evolve and enable organismal adaptation to changing environmental conditions.
Douglas Sims
Douglas Sims is Dean, School of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics at the College of Southern Nevada. He leads a school of more than 280 staff (FT and PT) serving 18000+ students. His focus is in sediments, geochemistry, environmental chemistry, and paleohydrology in the Southern Great Basin and Mojave Desert. Current projects are paleohydrology of desert playas, trace metals scavenging by rock varnish, surface water quality, and sediment migration and transport of trace metals in agricultural soils.
Joel Snyder
Dr. Snyder received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Cornell University and was a post-doctoral fellow at University of Toronto and Harvard University before starting the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at UNLV. He is an expert on auditory perception and its neural basis and has published numerous empirical studies and literature reviews in top psychology and neuroscience journals. His research has been supported by UNLV, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research, and the REAM Foundation. Dr. Snyder’s research accomplishments were recognized with the 2009 Samuel Sutton Award for Early Distinguished Contribution to Human ERPs and Cognition, and the William Morris Excellence in Scholarship Award. He was also the UNLV nominee for the 2018 Nevada Regents’ Researcher Award.
Edwin Oh
We are a research group that thrives on collaboration. Through our interactions with collaborators, public health labs, and patients we have developed a research program that interrogates the following themes:
1) Wastewater genomics and COVID-19
Wastewater testing has been used for years to investigate viral infections, to study illicit drug use, and to understand the socioeconomic status of a community based on its food consumption. While tools are in place in many states to evaluate the presence of specific viral strains, the community has not needed previously to collaborate on a global scale to standardize procedures to detect and manage COVID-19 transmission. In response to this challenge, our laboratories in Arizona, Nevada, and Washington have developed collection techniques and genomic and bioinformatic approaches to harmonize and visualize the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection and viral mutation rates in communities populated by local citizens and international tourists. Our findings will contribute to the development of best practices in sampling and processing of wastewater samples and genomic techniques to sequence viral strains, an area required for environmental surveillance of infectious diseases, and has the strong potential to improve the clinically predictive impact of the viral genotype on patient care and vaccine utility.
2) Rare neurological conditions
An association between the 16p13.2 copy number variation deletion and seizures has suggested that a) systematic suppression of each of genes in the loci might yield similar neurological phenotypes seen in the 16p13.2 deletion; and b) such genes might be strong candidates for harboring rare pathogenic point mutations. Through these studies, we discovered USP7 as a message capable of inducing abnormal neurological activity in brain organoids, cultured neurons, and loss-of-function mouse models. Together with collaborators at the Foundation for USP7-Related Diseases (www.usp7.org), our studies are centered on the mechanism by which USP7 gene dosage and rare variants can induce pathology. In addition, we have also identified other gene loci that mimic USP7-related disorders in human and animal models.
3) Ciliary biology and neurodevelopmental conditions
Large-scale studies have begun to map the genetic architecture of Schizophrenia. We now know that the genetic contribution to this condition arises from a variety of lesions that include a) rare copy number variants (CNVs) of strong effect; b) common non-coding alleles of mild effect; and c) rare coding alleles that cluster in biological modules. The challenge that has emerged from these studies is the requirement for large sample sizes to detect significant genetic signals. These findings intimate that SZ is genetically heterogeneous and manifesting potentially as a clinically heterogeneous group of phenotypes with discrete physiological drivers. To address this challenge and to complement the ongoing sequencing effort of cross-sectional SZ, we propose to sample individuals with extreme phenotypes (i.e., resistant to treatment: TRS) to potentially discover an enrichment of causal rare variants which would have otherwise not been observed or been difficult to detect in a large, random sampling of SZ. In addition, we will focus on the role of a specific biological module, the pericentriolar material (including the centrosome, basal body, and primary cilium) and how it relates to the development of the brain and behavior through the genomic and functional dissection of PCM1.
Cory Rusinek
Professor Rusinek is interested in electroanalytical chemistry, sensor development, and materials technology. This includes development in both biological and environmental sensing where applications in neurochemical detection, wearable sensors, and environmental monitoring coalesce for tangible impact on society. Prof. Rusinek is also interested in electrochemical methods for fundamental understanding of molten salt chemistry. In Prof. Rusinek’s group, students are exposed to a multi-disciplinary environment, pulling from knowledge in chemistry, electrochemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science.
Iain Buxton
The Buxton lab is exploring contraction-relaxation coupling in the uterine myometrium in order to better understand and develop treatments for the problem of preterm labor. Preterm delivery of an underdeveloped fetus is a global problem. Babies delivered prior to full development at term have multiple medical problems that plague these individuals throughout their lifetime. Prematurity explains 75% of all fetal morbidity and mortality. Thus, beyond the tragic and costly fact of their prematurity, is the major impact on individuals and societies long-term. There are no effective (or FDA-approved) medications that prevent contractions of the uterus in patients who enter labor preterm (PTL). What is used is ineffective at allowing the fetus to remain in the womb until term. Drugs employed to prevent PTL (tocolytics) are only evaluated for an ability to prevent labor for 48 hours, a time during which treatments can ready the fetus to breath air. PTL leads to preterm delivery (PTD) in over 50% of cases. Spontaneous PTL (sPTL, no explanation such as infection) accounts for the majority of PTL.
The approach to sPTL we are pursuing is based on the non-canonical pathway by which NO relaxes myometrium. Our approach hypothesizes specific S-nitrosation differences in the protein fingerprint of sPTL compared with laboring myometrium. What is needed to investigate sPTL is to know the specific proteins that are post-translationally S-nitrosated and their abundance and/or unique presence and the impact of their S-nitrosation in pregnancy, labor and sPTL.
We have discovered particular unique proteins that are deferentially S-nitrosated and are pursuing their role in mediating relaxation on pregnancy and labor. One such protein is a channel called TREK-1. This channel is stretch-activated. We discovered genetic variants of the channel associated with PTL in women. Electrophysiological measurement of these gene variant channels suggests that their expression in women may constitute a mechanism to explain PTL in these patients. Drug discovery is in process to generate therapeutics to treat this form of PTL.
In a second thrust, the Buxton lab is looking for therapeutic targets in breast cancer. Tumor cells migrate to distant sites in the body before they are capable of forming aggressive metastases and thus remain dormant. We do not know the cellular behavior of disease we label latent but attracting a blood supply may be an early property that precedes and is required for those lesions that become malignant in women. Breast cancer specific mortality is almost exclusively a function of metastasis. Growth of tumor cells as metastases dictates that tumor cells must first develop a capillary blood supply or risk necrosis. Metastatic tumor cells have already attracted a blood supply, a hallmark of cancer. What activates dormant cells at metastatic sites to move from a quiescent to aggressive phenotype is not known. It is critical to determine the effect of a kinase we discovered to be released from cancer cells because every indication is that it produces a blood supply for cells that can later become malignant, an event that cannot take place unless a blood supply is available. Our current experiments are focused on the actions of the kinase that permit intravasation and extravasation of tumor cells that permit their passage to distant sites in the body where they can lodge and remain undetected for years. We have developed an inhibitor of the kinase and hope to demonstrate its potential a breast cancer prophylactic.
Pradip Bhowmik
My interests focus on organic and polymer synthesis in general. More specifically, we are interested in developing novel light-emitting and liquid-crystalline polymers for their multitude applications in modern technology including biosensors. In another project, we are developing ionic liquids based on the concept of green chemistry, and liquid-crystalline and light-emitting organic salts to make them functional materials. Carbon nanotube-based composite materials based on ionic polymers are of significant interest in our group. In recent years, we are also actively pursuing for the development of cisplatin analogs for the development cancer therapy.
Dustin Hines
The brain operates as a complex orchestration that involves many different cellular players. Dr. Dustin Hines’ research is aimed at understanding the role that glial cells play under normal and pathological conditions, which include neuropsychiatric disorders (depression), traumatic brain injury, stroke and Alzheimer disease. In particular, Dr. Hines researches how astrocytes and microglia cells both talk and listen to neurons. Dr. Hines employs molecular genetics, biochemistry, confocal and two photon microscopy, electrophysiology and behavioral assessments in mouse models to gain understanding of how glia cells impact brain signaling, circuitry and behavior. Dr. Hines’ research ultimately is directed towards understanding how all of the cells of the brain are orchestrated into the precise symphony that we call behavior.