Research at SMU

“Yes, it matters that lakes are losing ice.”   That’s the conclusion Xiao Yang and his international colleagues determined in a new study published in the journal Science.   At least 1.1 billion people live in areas near lakes that experience winter ice cover. Over the past 165 years ice duration has decreased and thousands of lakes that historically froze every winter now experience ice-free years. Not only do these changes have socioeconomic consequences for nearby communities, the study finds, but the quality and duration of that ice cover also controls key physical, chemical and biological processes within freshwater ecosystems.   “Although interest in winter research has increased, ice on lakes during winter is not well studied,” said Yang, a remote sensing hydrologist at SMU. “In comparison, research done during warmer months, or what we call open water months, is more common even though how the winter season impacts lakes is just as important as the summertime.”   Read more about the researchers’ findings: https://lnkd.in/dNHzsKeU

Today is World Mental Health Day, and #SMU psychological and medical anthropologist Neely Myers has a new book out this month titled “Breaking Points: Youth Mental Health Crises and How We All Can Help.” Myers wants to raise awareness about pathways to care for young people in crisis and how we can improve those pathways to help them get back on track.    A free ebook version will be available through Luminos, the University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

On Oct. 3, SMU partnered with The University of Texas at Dallas for a Computational Biology and Health Workshop at Pegasus Park. Researchers from both universities shared the medical and healthcare projects they were working on to see if collaboration through computational biology – the study of biological systems and relationships using computational methods – could lead to new breakthroughs in their research. After lightning talks about different topics were discussed — from trying to better understand potential biomarkers or risk profiles for reward dysfunction to how a low-cost virtual reality training was developed for surgeons in Africa — the workshop’s attendees were then invited to ask each other questions about their research. They also got a tour of Pegasus Park, which is home to SMU’s Institute of Computational Biosciences and other top North Texas healthcare facilities and several nonprofit organizations.   Southern Methodist University Lyda Hill Philanthropies

SMU researchers are speeding up drug discovery through development of SmartCADD, an open-source virtual tool that accelerates the screening of chemical compounds. Drug discovery is much like working a jigsaw puzzle. The chemical compounds behind drug molecules must be shaped to fit with the proteins in our bodies to produce therapeutic effects. That requirement for a meticulous fit means the creation of new drugs is extremely complex and time-consuming. SmartCADD combines artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics and Computer Assisted Drug Design (CADD) techniques. A recent study published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, demonstrated SmartCADD’s ability to identify promising HIV drug candidates. The new tool grew from an interdisciplinary collaboration between SMU’s department of chemistry in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and the computer science department in the SMU Lyle School of Engineering. In addition to #SMU faculty members Elfi Kraka and Corey Clark, authors include chemistry postdoctoral research fellow Ayesh Madushanka, whose work is supported by a grant from the O’Donnell Data Science & Research Computing Institute, and computer science graduate student Eli Laird, an O’Donnell Institute Ph.D. fellowship recipient (both pictured below).   Learn more about SmartCADD’s potential: https://lnkd.in/gdyitawk

Save the date! Harvard Kennedy School’s Sheila Jasanoff will be giving the 2024 Allman Family Lecture at SMU titled "Science and Democracy: What Should People Know?" The talk, which will be held on Oct. 10 at Moody Auditorium, will explore why 21st-century America has seen a rise in denialism, conspiracy theories, and skepticism toward expert institutions. She will also make the case for why a robust scientific enterprise is essential for a strong democracy. Jasanoff’s work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies, and she is the founding director of the Science and Technology Studies Program at Harvard.  Southern Methodist University Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education

#SMU researcher Alicia Meuret has a new paper in the journal Nature Reviews Psychology that continues exploring why some folks have difficulty enjoying things or feeling happy.   The diagnosis is anhedonia, and it can make life extremely hard. Meuret and her colleagues are considering the impact of diminished positive emotions and anhedonia on depression, anxiety, and trauma.    They suggest a paradigm shift away from treatments primarily focused on alleviating negative emotions (the current gold standard) and moving towards treatments that augment reward processing and positive emotions. Doing so could enhance treatment responses and overall quality of life of people with mental health conditions.    Read the full study: https://lnkd.in/gFXgV8Wi

Nano- and microrobots as drug-carriers for therapeutic advancement. That’s the focus of an upcoming talk that SMU #nanotechnology expert MinJun Kim will be giving at the 2024 PharmSci 360 conference, held later this month in Salt Lake City Utah. Kim is internationally-known for his contributions to the development of nano- and microbiotics and their broad applications for #nanomedicine. #DrugDelivery

Well-deserved! Tom Leatherbury and Peter Steffenson of the SMU Dedman School of Law First Amendment Clinic have been awarded this year’s James Madison Award. The award, given by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, recognizes journalists, elected officials, academics, attorneys and vigilant citizens for outstanding achievements and distinction in open government and First Amendment rights in Texas. Leatherbury is the director and Steffensen is a law fellow with the clinic, which focuses on First Amendment issues including free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly and petition. Texas Public Radio Southern Methodist University

Imagine if #machinelearning and deep data representation could help determine how well surgical trainees are performing in the operating room, or help a teacher identify possible issues with a second-grader’s reading skills. SMU Lyle School of Engineering's Eric Larson talked recently about possibilities like these that he and his students are exploring with the assistance of SMU’s high-performance computing capabilities. The SMU NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD Advantage and M3 HPC “are vital parts of the research we do,” said Larson at the O’Donnell Data Science & Research Computing Institute seminar on Sept. 18. “So many times, a huge part of the research that we need to carry out is performing ablation studies or hyperparameter searches, looking at the different ways that we can solve a different problem, and that would not be possible without the high-performance capabilities or the personnel that…work with a lot of my students to help them through the process.” Larson specializes in the interdisciplinary relationship of machine learning and signal/image processing with the fields of security, health, education, human-machine teaming, and ubiquitous computing. He was invited to speak about his research by the O'Donnell Institute, whose mission statement is to perform multi-disciplinary research in data science, high-performance computing, AI/machine learning, and future technologies. Southern Methodist University