St. Lawrence University Neuroscience Alumna Dr. Jaime Ross presents the annual Richard D. Church Lecture in Neuroscience
On April 29th, 2024 students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered in Eben Holden to listen to the annual Richard D. Church Lecture in Neuroscience presented by Jaime Ross, Ph.D. The title of the lecture was “A Multifaceted Approach to Understanding Aging and Neurodegenerative Disease.”
Dr. Ross is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience within the George and Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience and Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island. A St. Lawrence University alumna who earned her B.S. in Neuroscience in 2003, Dr. Ross has the distinction of being a member of the first cohort of neuroscience majors to graduate from SLU.
In her lecture, Dr. Ross presented research on the impacts of environmental and lifestyle factors on mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenetics, and chronic inflammation in aging and disease states. A key message from her research is that aging is malleable, and that exercise is an important means of altering the aging trajectory of organisms.
Dr. Ross has remained connected with her undergraduate alma mater in various ways. She is an active participant in St. Lawrence’s LINC Mentor program offered by the Center for Career excellence where students are connected to Laurentian alumni and parents for career path guidance. Dr. Ross serves as a research mentor for several recent St. Lawrence University neuroscience graduates pursuing Ph.D.s in the College of Pharmacy and she has hosted several students interested in research careers for summer internships in her laboratory.
The annual Church lecture series was established in 2006 by the late Richard (Dick) Dwight Church of Norwood, NY. At the time, Mr. Church stated his hope in endowing this lectureship was “…that by learning about current thinking in the field of neuroscience, students and faculty will be inspired to further expand and explore their interests." Sadly, Mr. Church passed away in November 2010. We are very grateful to his wife, Vernice Church, and the family for continuing to sponsor this lecture series in his memory.
