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Competition breaks research down into bite-sized chunks

Science is usually a serious matter, but there were plenty of laughs last week at the fourth annual Science Bites event held at WSU Spokane. The science communications competition featured ten graduate and professional students from the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, who rose to the challenge of providing a compelling description of their research in no more than three minutes.

Participants could use one static PowerPoint slide and were expected to use language that could be understood by non-specialists. Facing a panel of judges, they pulled out all the stops, using a variety of laugh-inducing metaphors and anecdotes in their quest for top honors.

Prizes—including $200 toward travel expenses to attend the Science Talk ’19 conference in Portland—went to the top three competitors, all of whom are PhD in pharmaceutical sciences candidates working in different research labs.

Group photo of the 2018 ScienceBites competitors and judges

Science Bites competitors and judges at the 2018 event. From left to right, in the back: Dyston Madsen, Panshak Dakup, Trevor Kirby, Philip Wibisono, Soumyadeep Sarkar, Siavosh Naji-Talakar, and Chancellor Daryll DeWald. Center: Shannon Kozlovich, Priyanka Bushana. Front: Xinyue Dong, Laken Kruger, Celestina Barbosa-Leiker, Shamema Nasrin, and Shirley Moore.

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Student finds pharmacy and loses shyness

Students on Campus Series: Thanh Thai

student entertainment board member thanh thai

Throughout most of her life until last year, Thanh Thai was a shy student who sat in the back of the classroom by herself. Something happened to her last year during her first year of pharmacy school on this campus, and now she is on the campus Student Entertainment Board and responsible for coordinating the stress-relieving activities for the student body during finals week.

Her story starts when she finished the fourth grade in her hometown in Vietnam and then her parents moved her and her younger brother to Mill Creek, Wash. Her father had his own business as a tailor in Vietnam but her parents wanted their children to have the career opportunities offered in the United States. When they relocated to America, no one in the family of four could speak English.
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Iraqi health sciences students visit WSU Spokane

Iraqi students

Iraqi students

Learning how other cultures and countries educate their citizens is always enlightening.

Twenty-three health sciences students from Iraq got great insight into how WSU Health Sciences Spokane educates its students, and WSU staff and faculty learned how the Iraqi students are educated.

It was all part of a visit through WSU’s international programs and the World Learning Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program.

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Research: New study reveals how shift work disrupts metabolism

Study author Elena Skornyakov loads a blood sample into the cold centrifuge at the sleep laboratory at WSU Health Sciences Spokane

Working night shifts or other nonstandard work schedules increases your risk of becoming obese and developing diabetes and other metabolic disorders, which ultimately also raises your risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Exactly why this happens has been unclear, but a new study conducted at Washington State University has brought scientists closer to finding the answer. » More …

WSU Spokane employee leads WSU APAC

Brigitta the chair of Administrative Professional Advisory CouncilLeading an advocacy group trying to represent 2,026 employees is not exactly how Brigitta Jozefowski (pronounced joe-zah-fow-ski) imagined her job when she first started working at Washington State University Spokane back in 2004.

After all, she was “just an hourly staff person” still working on an undergraduate degree she had started years earlier.

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WSU Spokane library director writes about servant leaders

Jonathan Potter

By Lorraine Nelson, WSU Spokane Communications

What if you were promoted at work over someone who had been there longer and was qualified, but who had been laboring at a more menial job and who did not enjoy the same rapport with the boss?

Would you feel squeamish about accepting the job?

That happened to Jonathan Potter many years ago when he was a young librarian, and he recounts that experience in an academic paper published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Servant Leadership.

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First Translational Medicine Symposium Showcases Progress, Challenges in Dealing with Brain Diseases

Finding a cure is an important goal of research on brain diseases. However, to patients and their loved ones, research that can help preserve or restore functional ability in their daily lives is just as crucial. This was one of the takeaways from the first annual WSU Translational Medicine Symposium held last week at the Providence Auditorium in Spokane.

The symposium brought together researchers, entrepreneurs, physicians, patients, and caregivers to share knowledge about treatment innovations and key issues related to brain diseases, the theme for this inaugural event.

Photo of ALS patient Matt Wild and his wife Theresa Whitlock-Wild
Assisted by his wife Theresa, Matt Wild talks about life with ALS during the symposium’s clinical problems discussion panel. (More event photos available on our Flickr page)

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Justice Department grants $300,000 to WSU Spokane for victim services

Jim Mohr

Jim MohrA $300,000 grant over three years from the U.S. Department of Justice will enable the Spokane campus of Washington State University to enhance what it has to offer victims of domestic or dating violence or stalking.

“Based on national data, we know that students experience violence in many areas of their lives,” says James Mohr, vice chancellor of Student Affairs at WSU Spokane (pictured). “This grant provides us the opportunity to reach those students and tell them that they are not alone and we are here to assist them.”

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Why we should talk about death

Barbara Richardson

Barbara RichardsonBy Lorraine Nelson, WSU Spokane

The patient had end-stage COPD and could hardly walk more than a few steps before she had to rest.

She was tethered to oxygen all of the time, and when she arrived at her health care provider’s office she declared she wanted to stop taking her medications.

If you were on her health care team, how would you treat her?

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