Photo: WSU’s reputation, and the chance to work with progessor Tim Baszler, attracted graduate student James Stanton, left. He will be among the students showing and explaining their research at the poster session Oct. 18. (Photo by Becky Phillips).
The scientist/student has taken on the role of “guinea pig” in Adie Wilson’s research.
Through funding from the WSU Drug and Alcohol Abuse Program, Wilson obtained an undergraduate research grant as a student of Michael Morgan, professor of psychology at WSU Vancouver. Now, in the neuroscience program in the Department of Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology and Physiology in Pullman, she is working on her graduate degree and will return to Vancouver to finish her Ph.D. As a “guinea pig” in this collaboration between campuses, Wilson says she hopes more students will be given such an opportunity in the future.
Her scientific work — on blocking the body’s development of tolerance to morphine — is the topic of her poster in the eighth annual College of Veterinary Medicine Student Research Symposium poster session, 3-5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18, on the second and third floors of the Animal Disease Biotechnology Facility.
Sponsored by Pfizer pharmaceutical company, the symposium usually draws 30-40 posters from students and residents/interns.
Another participant, graduate student James Stanton, said he came to WSU because of the its reputation and the chance to work with Tim Baszler, professor in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology and director of laboratory operations at the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory.
Stanton, a resident in the department, is working to develop a laboratory model for studying the disease scrapie in the natural host cells of sheep.
Scrapie is a prion disease — the same type of infective organism that causes “mad cow disease.” Stanton’s studies could lead to a keener understanding of prion diseases, which have no cure.
