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.

Posts By This Author

A Summer of Science

Summer Poster Days Showcase IRP Summer Intern Research

IRP summer intern Thomas Savage

Every summer, NIH welcomes hundreds of enthusiastic young men and women to its campuses to work as summer interns, providing them with scientific training and mentorship from some of the world’s preeminent researchers. As always, the Summer Internship Program culminated this year with Summer Poster Days, held on August 1 and 2, a bustling event where summer interns showcase the results of their immersion into IRP research. Nearly 800 IRP summer interns participated in this year’s event, presenting research on cancer vaccines, new applications for virtual reality technology, experimental antifungal treatments, how the brain perceives pitch in sounds, and much more. Read on for a glimpse at some of this year’s summer interns and the work they braved a blazing Washington, D.C., summer to pursue.

Dysfunction in Janitorial Gene Contributes to ALS

IRP Study Points to Treatment Target for Fatal Neurological Disorder

person taking out the trash

Just like we throw out our busted toasters and other appliances, our cells must continuously dispose of malfunctioning equipment to keep themselves working optimally. In certain neurological diseases, though, neurons die because they can’t get rid of misbehaving molecules. New IRP research provides crucial insights into a key player in this process, suggesting that restoring the function of a particular gene or boosting the levels of the enzyme it produces could help patients with the devastating disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

IRP Scientists Sound Off in Three-Minute Talks

Annual Competition Tests Researchers’ Communication Skills

three hourglasses

Many scientists say that English is the international language of science, but if it is, it’s a form of English that many fluent English speakers might have trouble understanding. From ‘allosteric modulator’ to ‘zinc finger nuclease,’ the words that scientists use to talk about what they do can sound like a foreign language.

Fortunately, many current and upcoming scientists are making it a priority to learn how to communicate with people who don’t share their deep knowledge. As part of this effort, NIH’s annual Three-Minute Talks (TmT) competition brings forth dozens of IRP postbacs, graduate students, and postdocs to talk about their research to an audience of peers outside their own labs. On June 27, this year’s 11 finalists delivered clear, engaging, and — most importantly — short talks on topics ranging from skin bacteria to saliva.

Metabolic Inflexibility Drives Increased Appetite

IRP Research Could Aid Personalized Weight Loss Recommendations

person eating an over-sized burger

We all know the stereotype of the picky child who shuns vegetables unless they’re smothered in ranch dressing or cheese. Surprisingly, the human body can also be similarly choosy about how it fuels itself. New IRP research shows that people whose bodies prefer to raid their sugar depots rather than use stored fat during a period without food consume more calories after their fast, suggesting a possible explanation for why some people are more prone to gaining weight over time or have less success with certain weight loss interventions.

Med Students Dip Their Toes Into IRP Research

Dozens of Doctors-To-Be Spent a Year Working in IRP Labs

NIH MRSP participants (clock-wise from top-right): Maame Amoako, Megan Jiao, Brady Greene, and Abhinav Suri

American medical and dental schools do an excellent job of producing caring and knowledgeable medical professionals, but they don’t always provide opportunities for their students to get a taste of life in the lab. For a few dozen of those students each year, NIH’s Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP) fills in that gap, welcoming a cadre of future physicians to NIH for a year of research in IRP labs. 

Over the past year, 52 medical students have been getting their feet wet in biomedical research under the guidance of experienced IRP scientists. Whether investigating new ways to detect diabetes or trying to improve ADHD treatment, the 2023-2024 class of MRSP participants received a world-class crash course in how to make new discoveries that will improve patients’ lives. Read on to get your own crash course on some of the exciting research they have been conducting over the past year.

A Promising Path to Saving Stiffening Livers

IRP Study Could Lead to New Treatments for an Increasingly Prevalent Liver Ailment

fatty liver

Experienced bakers know certain ingredients are impossible to work with when they’re not supple enough — just try making cookies with ice-cold butter or rock-hard brown sugar. The same could be said of the liver, which struggles to do its job when high levels of fat accumulate in it and trigger a process that binds the liver up in an inflexible mesh. Recent IRP research has identified a key set of biochemical events responsible for that ailment, pointing the way towards a possible method of treating an increasingly prevalent cause of liver disease.

Say Hi to AI

NIH AI Symposium Highlights Potential of New Computational Tools

human head made out of computer circuits

The human brain is often compared to a computer. Although scientists and philosophers have long debated the appropriateness of that analogy, there’s no doubt that if our brains are computers, evolution takes its sweet time between software updates. Compare that to the rapid advancement of modern computers and it’s clear why many researchers are turning to software to assist the biological computer nature placed in their own heads.

On May 17, NIH celebrated this remarkable partnership between humans and machines with its first-ever Artificial Intelligence Symposium, a day-long event that brought together researchers from all around the IRP to share the ways their work is taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which aims to create computers that can learn the way we do. Anyone in attendance surely came away in awe of the possibilities for how such technologies could accelerate our investigation into the mysteries of biology and the development of new medical treatments. For those who missed it, read on for a rundown of a few of the many research projects IRP researchers presented at the event.

Postbac Poster Day Presents a Buffet of Biology

Young Scientists Demonstrate Fruits of Their IRP Research

IRP postbaccalaureate fellow Monica Mesecar with her poster at Postbac Poster Day

There’s nothing quite like visiting NIH’s Postbac Poster Day to boost your faith that the future of biomedical science is bright. On May 1 and 2, more than a thousand recent college graduates participating in NIH’s Postbac program showed their colleagues, friends, and family the fascinating projects they’re working on in IRP labs. From delving into the aging brain to making sense of the bacteria on our skin, these aspiring researchers demonstrated that they have the passion needed to unravel the most complex mysteries of human biology. Read on to learn about the scientific questions just a few of them have been doggedly investigating over the past year.

Symposium Spotlights Promising Female Scientists

Annual Event Recognizes Three Young Researchers’ Scientific Accomplishments

Dr. Jennifer Zink

For decades, NIH has been working to solve the problems that have long stymied the careers of many young women interested in becoming scientists. As that essential effort continues, it’s important to shine a spotlight on some of the talented female researchers who are contributing to our knowledge of human health and biology right now.

One way the IRP does that is through the annual NIH Women Scientists Advisors (WSA) Scholar Award Symposium, which each year gives three early-career female scientists working in NIH labs the opportunity to present their work to the entire IRP community. At this year’s symposium, which took place April 29, the most recent group to be named WSA Scholars by NIH’s Women Scientists Advisors committee discussed their efforts to probe pollution’s impact on health, improve immunotherapy for cancer, and examine how screen time affects kids. Read on to learn more about their award-winning research.

Bone Marrow Cells Reveal Secret Weapon to Battle Bacteria

Research Could Lead to Cell-Based Therapies for Infections and Autoimmune Reactions

bacterial colonies growing in a petri dish

One thing many scientists love about their job is that the topic they study can still surprise them even after decades of research. IRP senior investigator Eva Mezey, M.D., Ph.D., for instance, has spent the last 20 years investigating a particular set of cells in the bone marrow, yet until now she had never uncovered one of their most intriguing tricks. In a recent study, her IRP team and its collaborators discovered that those cells make a substance that can fight infections and tame hyper-active immune responses.

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