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August 2026
Honors & Awards
Adam Puche, PhD, Professor and Vice Chairman in the Department of Neurobiology, has received a Distinguished Lecturer and four Teaching Commendations for medical school courses he taught last school year.
Grants & Contracts
Mary Kay Lobo, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of Trainee and Faculty Development in the Department of Neurobiology, was awarded a UMB Pivoting Programmatic Research Grant to study Maternal Opioid Mechanisms Encoding Neurodevelopmental Trajectories Using Integrated Tissue Analysis.
Thomas Ernst, PhD, Professor, from the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, received $2,118,130 for a four-year R01 grant from NIBIB for a project entitled “Fast motion navigators for brain diffusion MRI.”
Yajie Liang, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, from the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, received $650K for a three-year Trailblazer R21 grant from NIH/NIA for a project entitled “Instrumented brain organoids transplantation for chronic stroke treatment.”
Ze Wang, PhD, Professor, from the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, received $200K from the Alzheimer's Association and the Foundation of the ASNR for a one-year project entitled “Non-invasive non-contrast agent-based sensitive BBB imaging for ADRD.”
Mark V. Mishra, MD, a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, was named by the RTOG Foundation as PI of “3543 Study: MOMENTUM-1: A multicenter, randomized, open-label, phase II study of [177Lu]Lu-DOTATATE in adults with progressive intracranial grade 1-3 meningioma” for $235,999 (6/8/2026–6/7/2031).
Robert J. Bloch, PhD., Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, is finalizing a collaborative Scientific Research Agreement with Sarepta Therapeutics valued at $130,500 in direct costs. The agreement supports the project, “Suppressing DUX4 Expression in Xenografts of FSHD Muscles with siRNA.”
Presentations
UM Radiation Oncology at AAPM 2026
Department of Radiation Oncology members presented research in a broad range of educational and other forums at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), July 19–22, in Vancouver, BC. With more than 40 presentations and service on panels, committees, and as moderators, the department was well represented across its many areas of research and practice. The theme of the meeting was “Inspiration. Innovation. Impact.” The AAPM meeting is the world's largest program of scientific, educational, and professional research in the medical physics field, drawing thousands of attendees.
Margaret M. McCarthy, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, was the Keynote Speaker at the Dutch Neuroscience Meeting in Tiel, Netherlands on June 25th. Her talk was entitled “Power play: How steroids, endocannabinoids and behavior sculpt neural development.”
Publications
Nrusingh Biswal, PhD, associate professor, Hua-Ren Ryan Cherng, MD, resident, Abdul K. Parchur, PhD, assistant professor, Baoshe Zhang, PhD, associate professor, David Alicia, senior dosimetrist, Elizabeth Manuel, senior dosimetrist, Kai Sun, statistician, Byongyong Yi, PhD, professor, Matthew Ferris, MD, associate professor, and Zaker Rana, MD, assistant professor, were the authors of “Predictive Dosimetric Parameters for Adaptive Replanning in Proton Beam Therapy for Thoracic Cancer,” published on July 4 ahead of print in Medical Dosimetry.
Hajar Moradmand, PhD, postdoctoral student, Jason Molitoris, MD, PhD, associate professor, and Lei Ren, PhD, professor, all in the Department of Radiation Oncology, were among the authors of Impact of Radiomics Parameters and Clinical Integration on Prognostication in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Multicenter Study,” published on June 19 in Life (Basel) (2026;16(6):1027).
Mark V. Mishra, MD, a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, was among the authors of “BRAF-Altered Glioma in Adults and Children: A Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) and European Society for Neuro-Oncology (EANO) Consensus Review on Clinical Management and Future Directions,” published on June 8 ahead of print in Neuro-Oncology.
Hangfan Liu, PhD, Assistant Professor, Bo Li, PhD, Research Associate, and Ze Wang, PhD, Professor, all from the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, were among the co-authors of “Arterial Spin Labeling MRI Denoising via Locally Adaptive Regularization with Structure-Guided Collaborative Data Selection,” which was published in NeuroImage in June 2026. Epub ahead of print. Dr. Liu was the first author and Dr. Wang was the last author. Separately, Dr. Wang, along with Donghui Song, Research Fellow, also from the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, were among the co-authors of “Consistent Brain Entropy Changes During Rumination Across Three Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanners,” which was published in Neural Plasticity. Dr. Wang was the last author.
Jinghui Wang, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Mikolaj Walczak, MSE, Research Assistant, Colleen Russell, Laboratory Assistant, Miroslaw Janowski, MD, PhD, Professor, Piotr Walczak, MD, PhD, Professor, and Yajie Liang, MB, PhD, Assistant Professor, all from the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, were among the co-authors of “Tunable Bessel Beam Two-photon Fluorescence Microscopy for High-speed Volumetric Imaging of Brain Dynamics,” which was published in Elife in June 2026. Separately, Dr. Liang was among the co-authors of “A Multimodal Adaptive Optical Microscope for In Vivo Imaging from Molecules to Organisms,” which was published in Nature Methods in June 2026.
Adam Puche, PhD, Professor and Vice Chairman in the Department of Neurobiology, is first author of a new publication, “In Defense of AI as an ‘Author’ Ethical Implications for Scientific Authors, Reviewers, Editors, and Publishing Policies” published in Head and Neck Pathol 20, 63 on June 6, 2026. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12105-026-01924-0
Mary Kay Lobo, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of Trainee and Faculty Development in the Department of Neurobiology, is among the authors of a new review article, “Brain mitochondria as key drivers of cognition and behaviour,” published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-026-01061-1
Robert J. Bloch, PhD., Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, was among the co-authors of “Unfurling the role of dysferlin’s C2A domain,” which was published in the Journal of General Physiology. The paper will be featured by The Rockefeller Press in its “Research News” article highlighting the study's findings that the dysferlin C2A domain alone can support normal Ca²⁺ signaling and sarcolemma repair, suggesting that it could be used in gene replacement therapies. The article was also selected as the journal’s Editor’s Pick for the issue.
Brian N. Mathur, PhD, Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, was co-senior author of "The human claustrum supports cognitive networks for externally and internally driven task demands," which was published in PLOS Biology on June 26, 2026.