Michael Young, Ph.D.,
Nobel Prize winner delivers keynote at inaugural UF Circadian Symposium
Michael Young, Ph.D., who shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, was the keynote speaker May 11 at the inaugural University of Florida Circadian Symposium. Young, the Richard and Jeanne Fisher professor at Rockefeller University in New York City, spoke about research into delayed sleep cycle disorder, which Karyn Esser, Ph.D, associate program director of the UF Institute of Myology and an organizer of the symposium, called critical in advancing the field. — Bill Levesque
The color of hope
As part of this year’s celebration of National Nurses Week, May 6-12, Anupama Priyardarshini, left, a member of the UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine program, created a mandala in the Garden of Hope outside the UF Health Heart & Vascular and Neuromedicine hospitals. Priyardarshini used Rangoli, a type of Indian folk art that involves colored sand and spices, to make the mandala’s unique designs. — Greg Hamilton
Newest medical facility at UF Health Springhill opens its doors
UF Health has opened a $36 million, 72,000-square foot facility in Springhill that will consolidate numerous practices currently around Gainesville in one location to better serve an estimated 70,000 patients each year. UF Health Physicians practices and services within the new building include the primary care services of internal medicine and family medicine, as well as the specialties of allergy, child psychiatry, integrative medicine, psychology, pain management and senior care. An outpatient pharmacy and a clinical laboratory in the new building, which is behind the original facility off Northwest 39th Avenue, will service both Springhill facilities. A new two-story parking garage is located adjacent to the building. — Rossana Passaniti
Funding for pancreatic tissue bank nears $24 million
A pancreatic tissue bank at the University of Florida that is helping scientists bridge the knowledge gap in Type 1 diabetes research will receive $10.5 million in renewed funding over the next five years from JDRF and $4.7 million from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. With commitments last year from the Helmsley trust of $5.1 million and $3.6 million from the National Institutes of Health, total funding for the bank comes to $23.9 million, said Mark Atkinson, Ph.D., director of the UF Diabetes Institute. The tissue bank, which JDRF calls the world’s largest biobank of pancreatic tissue, is known as nPOD, or the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes. It’s both a collaborative network of scientists and a tissue bank, with 50,000 tissue samples from 475 donors. — Bill Levesque
