Faculty News

NEW FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: DR. BRANDON KIM

Dr. Brandon Kim conducted his Ph.D. work in the laboratory of Dr. Kelly Doran at San Diego State/University of California San Diego where he began to examine the host-pathogen interaction of Group B Streptococcus and the blood-brain barrier. During his doctoral training, he was awarded the American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship as well as many other awards such as the ARCS scholarship and the Rees-Stealy Graduate Research Fellowship. After completing his PhD, he sought expertise in blood-brain barrier modeling by conducting postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department under the direction of Dr. Eric Shusta, where he was awarded a Wisconsin Stem-Cell and Regenerative Medicine postdoctoral fellowship and was the first to implement human stem-cell derived bloodbrain barrier models in the context of infectious disease. He then was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship for continued postdoctoral training in Germany, where he joined the group of Dr. Alexandra Schubert-Unkmeir at the University of Wuerzburg. There, he was able to establish a state-of-the-art stem-cell modeling technique using the human-specific pathogen Neisseria meningitidis and implement new RNAseq technologies with collaborators from the Helmholtz Institute for RNA and infection biology. Dr. Kim has published work in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Nature Communications, Frontiers in Microbiology, and others. He has also mentored numerous undergraduate and graduate students throughout his training.

For our full Q&A with Dr. Kim, visit our website. ■

DR. LAURA REED HONORED WITH PRESIDENT’S FACULTY RESEARCH AWARD

Each year, the President’s Faculty Research Award, sponsored by the President and the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, is awarded to outstanding faculty from across UA Colleges and Schools. We are thrilled to share that Dr. Laura Reed, Associate Professor in Biological Sciences, received this award in the “Mid-career Physical & Biological Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering” category this year. Dr. Reed’s research unites evolutionary genetics with analysis of the multi-layer physiological mechanisms that determine population level variation in metabolic traits like obesity and type-2 diabetes. She uses fruit flies as a model system to explore how the complex interactions between genetic factors and environment drive differences in disease risk among individuals. Specifically, she studies the impacts of diet, exercise, gut microbiome, and transgenerational environment on metabolic traits. She and her team perform elegant experiments and employ cutting-edge genomic, metabolomic, and computational approaches to understand how these factors interact. Dr. Reed is a prolific scholar who has authored more than 35 peer-reviewed publications and publishes her work in top journals including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Genetics, Metabolomics and others. Her research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health, and she has been awarded more than $6.6 million dollars in grant funding since joining UA.

Dr. Reed incorporates aspects of her research and cutting-edge research in her field into her teaching through UA courses such as Integrated Genomics and Evolution. In 2017, she became the Director for the Genomics Education Partnership, a national collaboration involving over 100 colleges and universities that provides authentic course-based research experiences to undergraduate biology students. She has since secured grant funding to double the number of institutions served by the partnership, especially focusing on minority-serving institutions and community colleges.

Dr. Reed is a valued member of the Department of Biological Sciences who, despite her active research program, has worked diligently to ensure that graduate student workloads are fair and balanced and, as of this semester, she serves as the chair of the newly formed departmental committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Learn more about her interesting and important research by visiting Dr. Reed’s website at http://flygxe.ua.edu/. Congratulations, Laura! ■