News

Huck Leadership Fellows selected for 2024-25

For the 2024-2025 academic year, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences has appointed Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Scott Medina, Professor of Statistics Lingzhou Xue, and Associate Professor of Surgery Dino Ravnic to be Huck Leadership Fellows.

Predicting neurodevelopmental disease in children from parent’s traits

Predicting the trajectory of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders like autism or schizophrenia is difficult because they can be influenced by many different genetic and environmental factors

Xiaogang Hu, right, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Neurorehabilitation and associate professor of mechanical engineering, will lead a $4 million grant from the U. S. National Science Foundation to make robotic protheses more useful for people living with amputations. Long Meng, left, a postdoctoral scholar in Hu's lab, will participate in the research. Credit: Kate Myers/Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

$4M grant funds project to make robotic prostheses more like biological limbs

Prosthetic hands that incorporate robotics can perform dexterous self-care tasks, but they are often hard to operate, requiring a user’s constant attention with a limited number of hand functions. With a five-year, $4 million U.S. National Science Foundation grant, Penn State researchers aim to make robotic protheses more useful for people living with amputations.

Q&A: How does mental health affect sports concussion recovery?

Athletes hitting the field for the fall sports season may want to pay just as much attention to their mental health as their physical health.

Nikki Crowley, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology and Neural Engineering and assistant professor of biology and of biomedical engineering, with her son after receiving the Women to Watch: Class of 2023 award as part of the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts’ Women in STEAM Awards. Credit: Nikki Crowley. All Rights Reserved.

Nikki Crowley honored with Women in STEAM Award by the Whitaker Center

Nikki Crowley, Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology and Neural Engineering and assistant professor of biology and of biomedical engineering, has been named among Women to Watch: Class of 2023 as part of the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts’ Women in STEAM Awards.

Girirajan named T. Ming Chu Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Santhosh Girirajan, professor and interim head of the Penn State Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been named the T. Ming Chu Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

New research on effects of binge drinking earns biologist early career award

Nikki Crowley, assistant professor of biology and biomedical engineering at Penn State, is the 2022 recipient of the Neuropsychopharmacology Editor’s Early Career Award.

Breathing may measurably modulate neural responses across brain, study finds

Mental health practitioners and meditation gurus have long credited intentional breathing with the ability to induce inner calm, but scientists do not fully understand how the brain is involved in the process.

Penn State biologist receives NIH grant to help unlock biology of binge drinking

Nikki Crowley, assistant professor of biology and of biomedical engineering at Penn State, has been awarded a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the neurobiology of binge alcohol drinking.

Researchers publish how-to guide for monitoring and analyzing brain activity

Penn State researchers have developed a set of tools and methods to better monitor and analyze sleep-related signals and fidgeting in rodent brain studies. Considered the bedrock of biomedical research, rodent studies often provide the first advanced understanding of brain activity and are the foundation on which human studies are eventually built.