Spinal Cord Injury Research with the Gensel Lab

John Gensel, an assistant professor in the physiology department and the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center, and two members of his lab team—Bei Zhang and Taylor Otto—are featured in this podcast.

Taylor Otto, an undergraduate lab assistant in Gensel’s lab, described UK as being the full package. “We have it all here. It’s a good program to be able to come into, not really knowing what you want to exactly do in the science field, but being able to figure it out at the same time,” said Otto.

Bei Zhang, a research scientist, said that working with Gensel has motivated her to do the best science she can. “If we can work at our research project every day in generating different thoughts and prove our hypothesis, we can make a contribution to the cure for spinal cord injuries.”

The team’s objective is to determine how to harness reparative capabilities of inflammation in spinal cord injuries. “Our goal is to really find out what physiological factors regulate the reparative or pathological balance, and gain insights into developing therapies for that,” said Gensel. “The overall goal is to improve the lives of individuals with a spinal cord injury.”