Richard Gronostajski, PhD, recently received $3.5 million from the Empire State Stem Cell Board to establish a Western New York Stem Cell Culture and Analysis Center.

Ji Li, PhD, studies the molecular mechanisms of coronary artery disease, the most common cause of age-related cardiovascular disease. He seeks novel strategies to boost patients’ tolerance of cardiac stressor events and prevent their loss of cardiac resilience.

Michael Garrick, PhD, identified the first protein essential for normal intestinal iron absorption and the first mammalian iron transporter to be characterized at the molecular level. His work provides a major step forward in the understanding of iron metabolism.

David Dietz, PhD, investigates cellular changes by which drugs “hijack” the central nervous system’s reward circuitry, causing addiction. He studies how differences in individuals’ molecular and behavioral plasticity mediate susceptibility to drug abuse and relapse.

Thomas Russo, MD, is internationally known for his work with strains of E. coli that cause infections outside the intestine and result in morbidity worldwide due to pneumonia, urinary tract infections and meningitis.

Suzanne Laychock, PhD, is investigating the cellular mechanisms regulating insulin secretion in pancreatic cells. Her group has used pancreatic cells in primary culture to develop in vitro systems that mimic aspects of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.

Noreen Williams, PhD, studies parasitic protozoans, including Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, transmitted by the tse-tse fly; and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas’ disease, transmitted by the reduviid bug.

Daniel Kosman, PhD, studies how organisms acquire and metabolize iron and copper, intrinsically toxic metals essential to cellular respiration and oxygen transport. One of his goals is to develop antifungal drugs to treat infections in humans.

Kenneth Blumenthal, PhD, is an expert in protein structures. He researches structure-function relationships in ion channels using naturally occurring toxins as probes of ion transport and gating processes. One of his goals is to design drugs directed at the target channel.

Gabriela Popescu, PhD, is studying NMDA receptors in the brain, which are involved in synaptic development, plasticity, memory and learning, as well as in pathologies such as stroke, neurodegeneration, chronic pain, addiction, schizophrenia and epilepsy.

James R. Olson, PhD, has traveled to Egypt to work with cotton laborers exposed to pesticides. His research links genetics, an individual’s degree of exposure to pesticides and effects on health, seeking to improve workplace and environmental health worldwide.

Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, works to elucidate melatonin’s mechanism of action and role in modulating circadian rhythms. Her lab develops novel molecules targeting melatonin receptors to treat depression, sleep disorders and cardiovascular disease.

Mulchand Patel, PhD, is a specialist in nutritional biochemistry. He found that fetuses of obese mother rats were programmed in utero to develop obesity in adulthood, and was the first to show that this metabolic programming occurs in the fetal hypothalamus.

Norma Nowak, PhD, studies global comparative genomics and differential gene expression analyses. She contributed to the creation of the BAC libraries used to sequence the human genome.

Te-Chung Lee, PhD, demonstrated for the first time, in an animal model, that injecting adult bone marrow stem cells into skeletal muscle can repair cardiac tissue, reversing heart failure. He and his team showed that this non-invasive procedure increased heart cells two-fold.

Fraser J. Sim, PhD, studies the molecular mechanisms controlling stem and progenitor cell fate in the human brain. His lab seeks to develop novel drug- and cell-based therapies for repair and regeneration in demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis.

Rajendram Rajnarayanan, PhD, studies interactomes of the human estrogen receptor, which is expressed in 70 percent of breast cancers. His lab seeks to design molecules to improve the effects of tamoxifen, a drug commonly prescribed to treat breast cancer.