2010 Veterinary Medicine Achievements
* Scott Morey, who earned a doctor of veterinary medicine degree in May 2010, is one of five recent veterinary medicine graduates chosen to have $100,000 in federal loans waived. Morey was chosen through the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Veterinary Medical Foundation's Food Animal Veterinarian Recruitment and Retention Program, designed to combat a growing shortage of food animal veterinarians. Nov. 2010.
* Frank Blecha, university distinguished professor of immunophysiology, interim associate dean for research in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and head of the department of anatomy and physiology, has been recognized by the American Association of Veterinary Immunologists as the 2010 Distinguished Veterinary Immunologist of the Year. The title is one of the highest honors in Blecha's field, and is used to recognize those who have advanced the study of the immunology. Oct 2010
* The College of Veterinary Medicine has earned accreditation from the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education. Accreditation for the college occurs once every seven years by the American Veterinary Medical Association. This association is designated by the U.S. Department of Education as the accrediting body for the nation's 28 schools of veterinary medicine, and is recognized worldwide as the gold standard in veterinary education. Oct. 2010.
* Four students from the College of Veterinary Medicine took home an assortment of honors from the 2010 conference of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners. Benjamin Wileman, a summer 2010 doctoral graduate from Belle Fourche, S.D., was the winner of the conference's Graduate Research Competition, for his work involving a novel vaccine technology to control a type of E. coli in beef cattle. Ruby Mosher, a doctoral candidate in pathobiology, Emporia, finished second in the research competition with her study of the effects of a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug on increasing the welfare of domestic livestock. Craig Pauly, Manhattan, and Austin Domek, Ypislanti, N.D., both graduate students in veterinary medicine, each received $5,000 scholarships from Pfizer Animal Health and the American Association of Bovine Practitioners Foundation. Oct. 2010
* University distinguished professors T.G. Nagarja, diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, and Chii-Dong Lin, physics, received prestigious Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Awards for 2010. Each award includes a plaque and a $10,000 grant for ongoing research materials. Nagaraja is the recipient of the Irvin Youngblood Award for Applied Science for his research on the microbiology of the gastrointestinal tract in cattle. Lin received the Olin Petefish Award in Basic Science. He is recognized internationally in several fields of atomic, molecular and optical physics, including the study of ultrafast, intense-field, short-pulse, laser-based physics. Oct. 2010
* Daniel C. Marcus, university distinguished professor of anatomy and physiology, will serve a four-year term on the National Committee for the National Association of IDeA Principal Investigators. The 20-member committee assists the National Center for Research Resources, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in strengthening biomedical research in 23 states -- including Kansas -- that are part of the Institutional Development Awards, or IDeA, network. Marcus is the principal investigator for the K-State Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, based in the College of Veterinary Medicine. The center studies epithelial cell function in human health and disease. It supports individual research projects as well as research facilities for confocal microscopy, molecular biology and electrophysiology investigators across eight departments in five K-State colleges. The center is beginning its ninth year of funding through a National Institutes of Health award of about $22 million over 10 years. July 2010
* The American Physiological Society selected K-State's Jacob Hull, junior in biochemistry, Garden City, as a 2010 Undergraduate Student Fellow. Hull received a $4,000 stipend to cover living expenses for the 10-week summer fellowship working in the laboratory of Bruce Schultz, professor of epithelial cell physiology in K-State's department of anatomy and physiology. Hull is one of 24 students worldwide to be named a Fellow. The fellowship program aims to encourage students about careers in biomedical research. Among the selection factors were academic merit and quality of research experience. Hull's research project is "Role of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma on epithelial growth, differentiation and activity" and is related to work done in Schultz's laboratory on the link between mutations in the cystic fibrosis protein known as CFTR and loss of the male reproductive duct that occurs in cystic fibrosis patients. Hull also received an additional $1,300 in travel funds to present his research at the Experimental Biology 2011 meeting in Washington, D.C., which is expected to attract nearly 14,000 scientists. May 2010
