The Academic Minute for 2016.3.14-3.18

Academic Minute from 3.14 – 3.18

Monday, March 14
Ilene Warner-Maron – Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Baby Boomers & STDs
Ilene Warner-Maron, PhD, is a clinical associate professor of psychology and co-director of the MS program in Aging and Long-Term Care Administration at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. For more than 30 years, she has focused her clinical practice on the care of geriatric patients through the continuum of care from home and community-based programs to long-term care. Specifically, she focuses on the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers as well as fall prevention, the avoidance of medication errors and the improvement of long-term care service delivery.

She continues to work as both a federal monitor of long-term care facilities and as a consultant to the industry, specializing in working with nursing homes and assisted living facilities with licensure issues. She also has conducted several research studies and lectured on HIV/AIDS prevention in the geriatric population, and the dissemination of HIV preventive strategies among this population.

Dr. Warner-Maron is a member of several professional organizations including the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, the American Geriatrics Society, and the Alzheimer’s Association. She also serves on the board of Annals of Long-Term Care and on the review panel of the Journal of Gerontological Nursing. She received a doctorate in health policy from University of the Sciences; graduate degrees in social gerontology from the University of Pennsylvania, health administration from St. Joseph’s University and law and social policy from Bryn Mawr College; and a bachelor’s in sociology from Philadelphia University.

Tuesday, March 15
Penny Spikins – University of York
Human Origins
Penny has been lecturer at the University of York since 2004, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 2012. She was first fascinated by human origins after visiting Upper Palaeolithic cave art sites when she was eleven. Her first degree was in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Archaeology at Cambridge, followed by a Masters at Leeds, returning afterwards to Cambridge for her PhD. She spent two years carrying out postdoctoral research in Patagonia, and further postdoctoral research as a Sir James Knott research fellow at Newcastle before taking up her first lectureship at Newcastle.

Penny’s early research centred on Mesolithic northern England where she retains an interest and enthusiasm, although she is best known for her later research into the evolution of social emotions and the significance of care for the vulnerable in human origins.  Penny has directed a major excavation project at Mesolithic sites in the Pennines, and underwater archaeological fieldwork in the North-East. Her published volumes include Mesolithic Europe (CUP) with Geoff Bailey,Prehistoric People of the Pennines (West Yorkshire Archaeology Service) and Mesolithic northern England: Environment, Population and Settlement (BAR). Over the last ten years she has particularly focused on cognitive and social evolution, publishing papers on the evolution of compassion (Time and Mind), dynamics of egalitarianism (Journal of World Prehistory), the origins of autism (Cambridge Archaeological Journal), evolution of self control and display in artefacts (World Archaeology) and Neanderthal childhood (Oxford Archaeological Journal).

Penny’s latest book, How Compassion Made Us Human (Pen and Sword) argues that a selection for pro-social emotional motivations has been the driving force behind human evolution, particularly considering how sensitivity and self control can be displayed through material things.

Wednesday, March 16
Jun Li –  University of Michigan
The Brain’s 24-Hour Clock
The Li lab studies the genetic basis of complex human diseases using genomic approaches. Currently our interests include analyses of gene expression patterns in postmortem brain tissues associated with major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, sequencing-based variant discovery and analysis in rare Mendelian disorders and the bipolar disorder, integrated analysis of cancer genome alterations, intratumor heterogeneity in breast and esophageal cancers, and spontaneous mutation patterns in the human genome.

Thursday, March 17
Andrew David – Clarkson University
No Longer an Ocean Away
Andrew A. David is an assistant professor of Biology and the director of freshman biology at Clarkson University. A native of Trinidad and Tobago, he received his B.S. in Biology from St. Johns University in Queens, New York and his M.S. in Biology from Hofstra University in Long Island, New York. He completed his Ph.D. in Zoology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. David is a marine biologist that uses experimental, genetic and modelling approaches to answer important ecological questions. His current research focuses on how anthropogenic pressures are driving important evolutionary changes in the world’s oceans.

Friday, March 18
June Pilcher – Clemson University
Lack of Sleep and Decision Making
Dr. Pilcher came to Clemson in 2001 and was awarded Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology in 2009. She was the 2011-12 Fulbright-Freud Scholar at University of Vienna and the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, Austria and was recognized at a Fellow in the Association of Psychological Science in 2010. Dr. Pilcher has been principal investigator on research grants cumulatively worth more than $2 million. Before coming to Clemson, Dr. Pilcher was on faculty at Bradley University and was a research psychologist and captain at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.