BoBI Student Awarded Epilepsy Foundation Fellowship

Posted on March 28, 2011

Anupam Hazra, a Ph.D. student in biochemistry, recently received a one-year, $20,000 fellowship from the Epilepsy Foundation - one of only a dozen such fellowships the Foundation awards annually.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by recurrent, spontaneous seizures and affects about 50 million people worldwide. In epileptic patients, abnormally synchronized neurons produce repetitive activity called synchronous bursts and seizures. These processes usually initiate in a small area and have an ability to spread throughout the brain.

Hazra works under Jokūbas Žiburkus, an assistant professor of biology and biochemistry who is studying the cellular and network mechanisms underlying activity in normal and pathological neural networks. Specifically, the lab is interested in how endogenous substances released by the brain, such as norepinephrine, regulate neural network dynamics.