Health Research

Every day, people are asked to find something – a familiar face in a crowd, a child in the park, a particular house on a street. While researchers have long-since known that the ability to effectively search and detect goal-relevant targets is controlled by top-down signals from the brain’s frontal area, a researcher from West Virginia University has found evidence that the human medial temporal lobe – or MTL – also plays an essential role in this process.

In this edition of Gee Mail, President Gordon Gee visits with faculty and students conducting research across campus on a diverse plate of offerings — from poultry to forensics to neurosciences.

Robert Stansbury, assistant professor in the WVU School of Medicine, is working as part of a multi-center project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to assess what impact treating obstructive sleep apnea has on diabetes self-management.

Building and operating a hydraulic fracturing well site can emit airborne particles in multiple ways. But scientists still don’t fully understand how these particles impact human health.

Four factors increase the odds that a patient will wind up on chronic opioid therapy, suggests research conducted by a team of researchers led by Nilanjana Dwibedi, assistant professor in the West Virginia University School of Pharmacy.

A pair of research teams from West Virginia University have received close to $500,000 in funding from the Alpha Foundation for the Improvement of Mine Safety and Health.

West Virginia University infectious disease expert Judith Feinberg, M.D., will participate in a briefing for members of Congress and their staffs on Capitol Hill Tuesday (April 24), at noon in the Congressional Visitor Center. Feinberg is the vice chair of the HIV Medicine Association and co-leader of a federally-funded project to reduce the incidence of infectious diseases in communities hard-hit by the opioid crisis.

Building on the success of its undergraduate program, the West Virginia University Board of Governors has approved a graduate program in biomedical engineering. The program, which will award degrees at both the master’s and doctoral levels, will be offered in the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources starting in the fall semester of this year.

In a move to help improve people’s lives through innovation in fundamental neuroscience research and education, West Virginia University will bring together some 50 of its laboratories to form a new Department of Neuroscience within the School of Medicine.

WVU Medicine announced Tuesday (April 3) that Carl Schmidt, M.D., a nationally recognized surgical oncologist specializing in cancers of the liver, pancreas, and stomach will join the WVU Cancer Institute in July.