Brandon Levy

Brandon Levy is a Health Communications Specialist for the NIH’s Intramural Research Program, where he works to increase the IRP’s public profile and ensure IRP scientists get the recognition they deserve. He particularly enjoys writing about the cutting-edge research performed at NIH but also produces videos and content for social media. Before joining the IRP, he worked as a science writer in NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and as a postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellow in NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), spending his days putting people inside giant magnets and sending magnetic waves into their brains to shed light on the mysteries of learning and memory. When he’s not hunched over a computer keyboard, Brandon enjoys singing in his acapella group, reading, honing his skills as an amateur chef, and over-obsessing about college basketball.

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Here Come the Computers

NIH AI Symposium Highlights IRP Efforts to Harness Artificial Intelligence

human body covered with computer code

Artificial intelligence is permeating seemingly every aspect of society — it’s even the villain in the latest Mission Impossible movie. Biomedical research is no exception to this trend, as showcased at this year’s NIH AI Symposium. The day-long event on May 16 showcased the many ways IRP researchers are harnessing the ever-growing learning capabilities of computers to explore how our bodies work and improve our health.

In between fascinating lectures by IRP senior investigators and visiting scholars from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a handful of IRP postbaccalaureate fellows, graduate students, and postdocs also gave short talks about how their labs are utilizing AI and machine learning in their research. Read on to learn about how four of these efforts could one day help speed up therapeutic development for cancer and rare diseases, reveal the relationship between brain activity and behavior, and identify patients with sickle cell disease who would benefit the most from high-risk, intensive treatments.

A Peek at This Year’s Postbac Poster Day

Annual Event Provides Showcase for IRP Postbaccalaureate Fellows

IRP postbac fellow Angel Obiorah with her research poster

As informative as undergraduate science courses can be, there’s no better way to learn the ins and outs of biology than to scrutinize and manipulate it in the lab every day. That’s why so many science enthusiasts flock to NIH after college to participate in the IRP Postbaccalaureate IRTA Program, which allows newly minted grads to spend a year or two working full-time in a lab at NIH. And rather than demonstrating the knowledge they’ve gained on a test, IRP postbacs get to present their research at NIH’s Postbac Poster Day each year, an environment akin to the poster sessions at scientific conferences many postbacs will be attending as they continue their scientific careers.

This year, more than 900 IRP postbacs showed off their research at the event, and unlike prior years, all their presentations were done during one absolutely jam-packed day rather than being spread over two days. Read on to learn about how five of them have taken advantage of the opportunity to work in IRP labs over the past year.

Dieting May Disrupt Women’s Sleep

IRP Study Reveals Influence of Calorie Intake and Reproductive Cycle on Sleep

woman yawning at work

Doctors have long emphasized the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight and getting enough sleep, but in our time-limited lives, we often have to choose between spending time exercising, preparing healthy meals, and getting sufficient shuteye. And the number of hours in the day may not be the only thing that pits weight loss against sleep. A recent IRP study suggests that young women who are not obese get poorer sleep when they change their diets in order to lose weight.

Startling Snapshots of Science

Vibrant Images Push Forward Environmental Health Research

cell junctions in tracheal epithelial cells from a TLR5 knockout mouse

Scientists and artists obviously don’t spend their days doing the same thing, but that doesn’t mean the former can’t sometimes inadvertently be the latter. Take for example the 14 IRP research fellows who submitted images to the most recent edition of the Fellows Scientific Image Competition at NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The competition, held every few years, shows that biomedical science can not only save lives, but also look good doing it.

“We are excited to showcase the work of our trainees using visual media, which reminds us there is art in science and showcases the important research we’re all engaged in at NIEHS,” says NIEHS Scientific Director Darryl Zeldin, M.D., who initiated the competition.

Robot-Assisted Experiments Point to Treatments for Rare Cancer

Study Identifies Drugs That Exploit the Disease’s Weak Spots

drug-screening robots performing automated experiments

The best way to destroy a cancer cell is to target its weak points, but that’s obviously easier said than done, especially when you want to kill those diseased cells while sparing healthy ones. That’s where robots come in, allowing scientists to quickly evaluate the effects of thousands of drugs on cancer to see what works and what doesn’t. IRP researchers recently used that approach to identify potential treatments for a rare skin cancer, including a strategy that appears to be particularly good at hitting the disease where it’s most vulnerable.

Tracking the Neuronal Response to Head Injury

New IRP Study Identifies Vulnerable and Resilient Brain Cells

man being treated for a head injury

Even with our thick skulls to protect our fragile brains, a hard enough blow to the head will still send our neurons into a tizzy. However, not all neurons are affected in the same way by a ‘traumatic brain injury,’ or TBI for short. By developing a way to see which neurons turn on a distress signal after a mild TBI, IRP researchers recently identified differences between neurons that die afterwards and those that are shaken up by the injury but manage to recover over time.

Experimental Psoriasis Drug Comes With An ‘On-Off’ Switch

IRP Research Could Lead to Light-Activated Treatments for Numerous Diseases

light bulb

Many helpful contraptions we use every day would be problematic if we couldn’t turn them off when we didn't need them. After all, you wouldn’t want to leave your oven on when you’re out of town, and most people wouldn’t sleep well with their bedside lamp on all night. Many medical treatments would benefit from the same flexibility, but creating such treatments is no easy task. IRP researchers recently took a significant step forward in this area by creating an experimental treatment for an irritating skin condition that can be activated and inactivated using different colors of light.

Get a Glimpse of NIH’s Graduate Student Science

Aspiring Scientists Show off Research Findings at Annual Event

IRP graduate student Angel Delgado

The NIH IRP provides not only a world-class environment for skilled scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries, but also an exhilarating training ground for the next generation of researchers. Among the many budding scientists working on NIH’s campuses are graduate students conducting part of their dissertation research in IRP labs. 

Of course, these ambitious trainees aren’t waiting until they receive their degrees to contribute to scientific breakthroughs. At this year’s Graduate Student Research Symposium, more than 100 of them presented research on topics ranging from the skin condition psoriasis to the role of immune cells in Alzheimer’s disease. Read on to learn more about some of the ways current IRP graduate students have expanded our understanding of the human body.

A Fight With The Flu Could Help Control COVID-19

IRP Mouse Study Reveals Factors That Influence Pandemic Virus’ Replication in the Lungs

a person's lungs surrounded by virus particles

Tuberculosis, the flu, a staph infection, asthma — you’d think all these ailments could only be bad news for the lungs. However, if they don’t get out of control, they might actually turn out to have an unexpected benefit. A new IRP mouse study suggests that a recent bout with these illnesses might prime the lungs to keep a lid on a COVID-19 infection.

One of the most perplexing aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic was the huge variation in individual experiences with the disease. Despite the incredibly infectious nature of the virus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2, many people never got sick at all, or at least never showed symptoms. For those who showed symptoms, they ranged wildly, mild for some and life-threatening for others.

A Step Towards Precision Medicine for Lupus

IRP Research Hints at Potential of Genomic Technologies to Predict Patient Outcomes

blood vial and diagram showing DNA methylation markers on DNA molecules

Our genes certainly have a huge influence over our risk for disease, but they don’t operate in a vacuum. Rather, they’re decorated with numerous molecular tags like a bejeweled bracelet, and these ‘epigenetic’ markers affect how genes behave. A recent IRP study revealed differences in certain epigenetic markers that may one day help doctors more effectively treat patients with the autoimmune disease known as lupus.

This page was last updated on Wednesday, March 15, 2023