CBR members honored at Faculty Recognition Luncheon

“Dr. Kenneth Mitton received a two-year, $136,000 grant from the Vision Research ROPARD Foundation to investigate possible interventions in the disease of diabetic retinopathy using an animal model. Dr. Mitton will investigate whether this disease exhibits an early cellular phase in which significant metabolic and inflammatory events occur well before changes become visible in the retina. The work is made possible by the existence of certain sophisticated equipment in the institute’s new Pediatric Retinal Research Laboratory. Dr. Mitton has become an expert in use of this equipment, to the extent that the company that makes the equipment has sent new personnel to him for training. In appreciation, the company donated $26,000 worth of specialized software to enhance Dr. Mitton’s research. These studies are being aided by efforts of a number of Oakland undergraduate students.

Last summer, Dr. Mitton was an invited speaker at the 17th Congress of the Chinese Ophthalmological Society in Nanjing, China. The title of his talk was “Epigenetic Crosstalk in ocular Development and Disease.” Dr. Mitton has also served as the supervisor of the institute’s cell and molecular biology shared facility and as organizer of the institute’s Summer Undergraduate Program in Eye Research (SUPER).”

“Within the past three years as Oakland University tenure-track faculty, Dr. Tamara Hew has published 21 scientific papers in such peer-reviewed journals as the Journal of Neuroscience, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, and Sports Medicine. Dr. Hew’s scholarly work is performed in collaboration with researchers from around the world. With a total of 50 total peer-reviewed publications in her young research career, Dr. Hew has earned a reputation as a world leader on the topics of exercise-associated hyponatremia, fluid balance disorders in endurance athletes, and the endocrine regulation of fluid balance during exercise. Accordingly, she has represented OU as an invited speaker at sports and endocrinology medical conferences in China and Monaco, in addition to many cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

In her most recent research, Dr. Hew is studying ‘Proof of Concept: Exercise, Irisin and Metabolic Fat Activation in Humans.’ She aims to use pilot data to launch National Institutes of Health grant proposals in 2013-14 to continue her exercise endocrinology work in both sodium balance and obesity reduction.”

“Dr. Libin Rong specializes in the area of mathematics biology. Since joining Oakland University in January 2010, he has published more than 12 peer-reviewed articles. His research is supported by both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Rong’s research in HIV dynamics has important implications for treatment of those individuals infected. He predicted that simply adding more drugs to current HIV treatment could not eradicate the virus. This was found to be consistent with later clinical results. Dr. Rong brings important expertise in infectious disease modeling as well as prestige and positive recognition to Oakland University.”