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Representatives from the National Primate Research Centers (NPRCs) spoke to an estimated 4,000 people who visited the NPRC booth at the 2nd annual USA Science and Engineering Festival from April 27 to April 29 in Washington D.C.

Billed as “the largest celebration of science in the U.S.,” the festival featured more than 3,000 interactive exhibits, more than 100 stage shows and 33 author presentations. More than 150,000 people attended. President Barack Obama attended a special event at the festival on April 27 to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The NPRC booth included a flip board with answers to common questions about animal research and a set of pig lungs (healthy and “smoker’s”) to demonstrate the effects of second-hand smoke on lung development. The booth also supplied NPRC bookmarks and information on all eight NPRCs.

The booth was staffed by: Kathy West and Keidri Herring, California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC); Diana Gordon and Steve Gordon (spouse), Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) ; and Jordana Lenon, Wisconson National Primate Research Center (WNPRC).  Other NPRCs including the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) helped organize the booth as part of the NPRC Consortium Outreach Working Group.

“We had many positive comments and interested visitors, and a number of people specifically thanked us for the NPRCs’ research efforts,” West said.

Special visitors to the festival included: The Myth Busters; Arne Duncan Secretary of Education; Bill Nye, the science guy; best-selling authors; astronauts; Nobel Prize-winner Carol Greider; and a rock guitar performance by Dr. Francis Collins, NIH director.

The Center’s Division of Global Programs hosted an exhibit titled “Animals and the Future” at the UW’s “PAWS-on-Science” outreach activities from March 30 to April 1 at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle.

The exhibit included information for children on methods used to study animals in the wild and included hands-on activities with some of the equipment and techniques used by researchers in the field. Children had opportunities to learn about radio telemetry, GPS, trap cameras, and biological sample collection.

“The exhibit demonstrated the close relationship between humans and the environment and how animals can provide the first indication of future environmental impact and global health issues,” said Randy Kyes, head of the division and WaNPRC core staff scientist.

“One of the exhibit activities that was a real hit involved a hands-on demonstration of primate fecal sample collection to look for intestinal parasites,” Kyes said. “Of course no real fecal samples were used, but the fake ‘pooh’ attracted a lot of interest.”

Close to 10,000 people attended the three-day outreach event which showcased almost 50 UW research groups.

 

The WaNPRC hosted the 29th Annual Symposium on Nonhuman Primate Models for AIDS from Tuesday, Oct. 25 to Friday, Oct. 28 in 2011 at Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, Washington.

Beatrice Hahn, professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, was the keynote speaker. Review the abstracts for speakers and posters.

This symposium contributed to the knowledge base on nonhuman primate models that will ultimately result in a vaccine to prevent transmission of HIV and enable treatments for those currently living with AIDS. Review the scientific program.

The WaNPRC thanks the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) for supporting this conference.

For more information, visit the symposium website.

On Friday, July 29, scientists from the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) participated in “Collaborations to Understand Research and Ethics (CURE),” a professional development program designed for science teachers. The program was developed by the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR) and funded by a Science Education Partnership Award grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

 

Eberhard Fetz, WaNPRC core staff scientist, and Chet Moritz, WaNPRC affiliate scientist, will contribute expertise to a new Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE) based at the University of Washington (UW). The CSNE, which launches this month in UW Russell Hall, is funded by an $18.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

“The center will work on robotic devices that interact with, assist and understand the nervous system,” said director Yoky Matsuoka, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering. “It will combine advances in robotics, neuroscience, electromechanical devices and computer science to restore or augment the body’s ability for sensation and movement.”

Fetz, a UW professor of physiology and biophysics, and Moritz, a UW professor of rehabilitation medicine, will contribute research on restoring movement to paralyzed limbs using tiny, battery-powered implantable brain-computer interfaces called neurochips. The two researchers and their colleagues have successfully deployed the devices in nonhuman primates.

“The neurochip can be used to bridge lost connections and can also strengthen neural connections by delivering stimulation synchronized with neural activity,” Fetz said. “It operates autonomously during free movements, allowing the adaptive brain to incorporate the artificial recurrent loop into normal behavior and provides ample time to create neural plasticity.”

The neurochip resulted from a productive collaboration between a neuroscientist, Andrew Jackson, and electrical engineering student Jaideep Mavoori. “The new center will provide many new opportunities for such innovative interdepartmental collaborations,” Fetz said.

Partners are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and San Diego State University. Also partnering are historically minority-serving institutions Spelman College and Morehouse College, both in Atlanta, and Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif. International partners are the University of British Columbia and the University of Tokyo.

For more information, read the UW news release.

Eb Fetz, WaNPRC core staff scientist, and colleagues for received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation for a project titled “Implantable Computers to Augment Brain Function.”

Fetz is collaborating Professors Jeffrey Ojemann (Neurological Surgery), Brian Otis (Electrical Engineering) and Babak Parviz (Electrical Engineering) on a project to develop and deploy recurrent brain-computer interfaces (R-BCIs). These R-BCIs have numerous clinical applications for bridging damaged biological pathways and for strengthening weak neural connections.

For more information, read the UW news release.

Following a successful surgery on Oct. 21, a patient at the UW Medical Center became the world’s first recipient of a device that aims to quell the disabling vertigo associated with Meniere’s disease. The device being tested — a cochlear implant and processor with re-engineered software and electrode arrays — represents four-plus years of work by Jay T. Rubinstein and James O. Phillips, both of whom are WaNPRC affiliate scientists.

Shiu-Lok Hu, WaNPRC core staff scientist, is part of a research team that received a five-year, $15.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the HIV Vaccine Research and Design (HIVRAD) program.

The Center is poised to add new BSL-3 facilities to our to our laboratory inventory. The addition of this facility has doubled our previous BSL-3 laboratory capacity. The new laboratory was carefully designed to accommodate and safely support several investigators’ research interests simultaneously.

When Lauren Jorelle was a UW student, she went to Indonesia as part of a field study program sponsored by the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) and the UW Department of Psychology. The experience was a good one — so good that she elected to go back on her own to do further research through the Indonesian university the UW collaborates with.