Top national prize goes to UF doctoral student for presentation of new way to track brain cell damage

Tim Shepherd, a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of Florida, has won a first place national award for his poster presentation of a new method for tracking and defining the death of brain cells following injury.

Shepherd was selected from an initial field of 80 graduate students and residents who submitted scientific abstracts, and was later declared the top-scorer among 18 finalists. He was presented with the Murray Goldstein Award, named for the former director of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, which includes a $500 cash prize and a plaque.

Shepherd received both the Goldstein award and a $450 travel stipend at the National Neurotrauma Society’s annual symposium in San Diego, Nov. 9-10.

In his winning poster, Shepherd described the use of an advanced form of magnetic resonance imaging, called diffusion MRI, to view samples of living brain tissue to track, measure and define the death of cells. The technique he employed measures the diffusion of water in tissues---a function that changes in response to cell injury.

Shepherd, who is enrolled in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program at UF’s College of Medicine, conducted the study at UF’s McKnight Brain Institute under the direction of Edward Wirth III, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of neuroscience. The research received support from Florida’s Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Trust Fund.

Findings from this research, Wirth said, may aid the development of better ways to diagnose brain cell damage that results from traumatic brain injury, stroke or spinal cord injury. He noted that diffusion MRI can be applied non-invasively to patients.