News Briefs

National Fellowship Awards

Adriano N. Salicru, a fifth-year M.D./Ph.D. student at the UT Medical School at Houston and the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston, recently received four national awards.

A $24,000 NASA Graduate Student Research Program fellowship began in August and is renewable for three years. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology awarded both a $2,000 summer research fellowship and a Chrysalis Project travel/educational scholarship, which provides travel and
accommodations for the 2004 annual meeting plus an in-depth crash course in the pathophysiology of allergy and immunology.

The American Association of Immunologists awarded a $1,250 travel scholarship for the 2004 Experimental Biology meeting.

Salicru studies neuroendocrine mediators of the human immune response, particularly the hormones that are released during physical or cognitive stress and how they affect immune cells. “This helps to explain why some people have relatively poorer health than others during times of stress,” Salicru said. “NASA became interested as astronauts are very likely to experience both physical and cognitive stressors both on the ground and in low gravity environments.”

Brain Games in HealthLeader

Does gray matter matter? Find out by playing one or all five“brain games” developed by The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston, now available online on the HealthLeader health information network, edited by Karen Krakower in the Office of Public Affairs.

The games were designed to educate children and adults on brain function. Cynthia Phelps, Ph.D., assistant professor of health informatics and one of the developers of Brain Games, believes that better understanding of what the brain does will help kids stay away from drugs, alcohol and other substances
that endanger brain function.

Check out the fun at http://www.healthleader.uthouston.edu.