Professor Anne Andrews receives a Fulbright Specialist Award to complete a project at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, The Czech Academy of Sciences, in the Czech Republic. The prestigious U.S. Department of State program selects highly accomplished faculty members and professionals to serve as expert consultants at academic institutions abroad for two-to-six weeks, teaching workshops, exchanging research, and building relationships for future institutional cooperation.
Andrews will be giving a public lecture for The Week of the Brain in the Czech Republic, which was initiated and established by the Czech neuroscientist Professor Josef Syka in 1998, along with other lectures and interviews across the country during a two-and-a-half-week tour from March 8 to March 25.
“I am excited to speak with the public, students, the media, and Czech academics about our work on implantable and wearable biosensors for stress and anxiety. Advancing individualized monitoring of neurotransmitters, hormones, and other signaling molecules is changing the practice of medicine and empowering people in their health and wellness journeys. My research group and collaborators are key players in widening the scope of targets for monitoring”, Andrews said. A short video on her vision was recently produced at Puzzle X in Barcelona (see below).
As UCLA professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, and a Senior Research Scientist in the Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology, Andrews leads efforts in basic and translational research on anxiety and depression, and at the nexus of neuroscience and nanoscience. Her interdisciplinary research team focuses on discovering, developing, and using in vivo neurotransmitter monitoring approaches to understand how the serotonin (and other) neurotransmitter systems encode emotionally salient information.
Andrews is one of over 400 U.S. citizens who share expertise with host institutions abroad through the Fulbright Specialist Program each year. Recipients of Fulbright Specialist awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, demonstrated leadership in their field, and their potential to foster long-term cooperation between institutions in the U.S. and abroad.
The Fulbright Specialist Award program is part of the larger Fulbright Program—the nation’s flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the federal government and designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
Fulbrighters address critical global issues in all disciplines, while building relationships, knowledge, and leadership in support of the long-term interests of the United States. Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in many fields, including 60 who have been awarded the Nobel Prize, 88 who have received Pulitzer Prizes, and 39 who have served as a head of state or government.
Above photo at PuzzleX in Barcelona courtesy of Professor Paul Weiss.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
