On November 3, 2006, the Advisory Council For Spinal Cord/Traumatic Brain Injury Research held its

SC/TBI Educational Symposium

Keynote Speaker

Jonathan Geiger, Ph.D., Professor and Chair – Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Therapeutics – University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences – Potential Dietary Interventions Against Acute and Chronic Neurodegenerative Disorders

Presenters

Robert Morecraft, Ph.D., Professor – Basic Biomedical Sciences – Sanford School of Medicine of The University of South Dakota – Structural, Molecular and Behavioral Mechanisms Underlying Motor Recovery in the Acute Phase of Traumatic Brain Injury with collaborators William Darling, Ph.D. – Department of Exercise Science – The University of Iowa and Colin Combs, Ph.D. – Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Therapeutics – University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Thomas Ripperda, M.D. – Avera Rehabilitation Associates – Evaluating the Effect of Partial Weight Supportive Treadmill Gate Training Following Traumatic Brain Injury 

James Sears, Ph.D., Director – Additive Manufacturing Center – South Dakota School of Mines and Technology – Direct Write Technology in Application to Nerve Cell Research

Da-Qing Yang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor – Basic Biomedical Sciences – Sanford School of Medicine of The University of South Dakota – Reprogramming Healthy Donor Cells into Neuronal Cells for Treatment of Spinal Cord Injury

The event was sponsored by:

Click the thumbnails of the pictures to enlarge:

Council member Dr. Barry Timms introduced all presenters.	Dr. Jonathon Geiger delivered the keynote address.	Between 45 and 50 people were in attendance.	There was some exciting research being discussed.

A message from the council chairman, Leo Hallan:

"Our first SC/TBI research education symposium was a success. Having another again some time sounds exciting to me. We had a turn out of 40 plus people who, all have a great interest in seeing research in this area move forward. Having us all together in one room wanting to listen and learn, that alone made the event a success.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Geiger, gave a very good presentation about his work and other using creatine as a potential treatment for SC/TBI. Here again is an example of some thing ready to be tried in a human clinical trial. That's a barrier we must break through.

The presentations by the principle investigators of the four research projects the council is currently funding also were very good. A big thank you to Dr. Morecraft and his collaborators Dr. Darling and Dr. Combs, also Dr. Ripperda on his weight bearing clinical trial, Dr. Sears on his work into Direct Write Technology and Dr. Yang's work with reprogramming of neuronal cells.

Between each presentation there was a short time for questions and answers. That was very enjoyable and lead to some good discussion that could have gone on had time permitted. This was one of the best parts, in my opinion, and if we are fortunate to have another we'll try to allow more time for that.

As at most events like this, the break times are as productive as the event. For me, I got to meet and visit with in person people I've only know through emails. I met many new people in the fields of basic and clinical researchers, research students and those that work in physical and occupational therapy.

As was said at the symposium, we badly need more people to get interested and involved in SC/TBI research and we urge all of you who have an interest or know someone who might to please contact someone from our council.

Thanks go out to Avera Research Institute for sponsoring our symposium, and also to the Sanford School of Medicine for hosting us, and to Dr. John Koch and Maria Kramer for organizing this event."