UK Scientist Profiles Get 324,000 Views on LabTV

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Video courtesy of REVEAL Research Media, featured on LabTV

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 27, 2016) — Over the last six months, videos of 22 biomedical researchers from the University of Kentucky, featured on the national website LabTV, have garnered 324,000 views.

LabTV.com features thousands of researchers working at dozens of leading universities, corporations, and the National Institutes of Health. In these videos medical researchers tell where they came from, how they chose their career, what they do each day in the lab, and why they love it.

Video courtesy of REVEAL Research Media, featured on LabTV

Jay Walker of TEDMED, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, started the site because if high school students or college undergrads can personally identify with a young medical researcher, they are far more likely to consider becoming one.

UK Vice President for Research Lisa Cassis, a professor of pharmacology and nutritional sciences, said, "We have a diverse group of talented young scientists in the labs of faculty across the depth of UK’s campus. Many of them are supported by the $95.4 million in NIH funding UK successfully secured last year. What better way to encourage young people interested in biomedical science to join us at UK than to introduce them to people who are actively engaged in health-related research?”

The most recent scientists profiled on LabTV’s UK Channel include:

  • Taylor Robinson, an Illinois native and freshman chemical engineering major, is studying muscle stem cells in Esther Dupont-Versteegden’s lab. He counts his uncles—an orthopedic physician and a physician’s assistant—and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as inspirations. 
  • Amanda Hayek, an Ohio native, has worked in Esther Dupont-Versteegden’s lab for two years. She is an American Physiological Society Stride Fellow. Hayek came to UK as a voice major, assuming Broadway was her destination, but switched her major freshman year once she got involved in research.
  • Ai-Ling Lin, a native of Taiwan who leads her own team in the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, was drawn to UK’s NIH-funded Alzheimer’s disease and translational research centers. She uses biomedical imaging to study brain aging and the impact of nutrition on cognition.

The first UK video was posted on LabTV in September 2015, and Research Communications is continuing to shoot videos for the site. Undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral students, and assistant professors—under the age of 40—conducting NIH-funded research are eligible to be featured on LabTV. Contact Alicia Gregory (apgreg@uky.edu), director of Research Communications, to suggest a scientist.