Rutgers Office for Research Sponsors Rutgers University Center for Autism Research, Education, and Services (RUCARES) 2022 Annual Symposium
More than 100 faculty, staff, and students attended the Rutgers University Center for Autism Research, Education, and Services (RUCARES) 2022 Annual Symposium at the Busch Student Center in New Brunswick. The event, sponsored by Rutgers Office for Research, provided autism researchers a day of engagement and networking over presentations and poster sessions, including a keynote presentation by nationally recognized autism researcher Kristen Brennand, PhD.
The RUCARES 2nd Annual Autism Symposium showcased new autism research at Rutgers, supporting future collaborations among Rutgers researchers and sharing autism knowledge with a broader audience.
“This conference is one way for Rutgers researchers to get together and share data and information on their current programs and to discuss possible avenues for future collaborations,” said Wayne W. Fisher, Ph.D, Henry Rutgers Endowed Professor of Pediatrics in the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Director of RUCARES. “The mission of RUCARES is to facilitate communication and collaboration among autism researchers, educators, and clinicians at Rutgers to improve the lives of persons with autism and their families.”
Dr. Fisher and Michael E. Zwick, PhD, Senior Vice President for Research at Rutgers, gave introductory remarks and spoke about the importance of collaboration among researchers, educators, and students at Rutgers.
“We convene and partner with academic and research leaders like Wayne Fisher and his team and are sponsoring the 2022 RUCARES Annual Symposium as part of our efforts to provide the necessary resources, tools, and services needed to advance and share knowledge and improve the lives of citizens in New Jersey, the nation, and the world,” said Zwick. “The mission of Rutgers’ Office for Research is to support the research, scholarship, and creative endeavors of all Rutgers faculty.”
This year’s symposium highlighted new autism research being conducted at Rutgers and beyond, spanning eight oral presentations and two poster sessions. Topics included a wide array of research, ranging from laboratory and clinical studies to applied research and the Rutgers Core Research Facilities that support autism studies.
The keynote presentation by nationally recognized autism researcher Kristen Brennand, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at the Yale University School of Medicine, highlighted the complex interplay between the many risk variants linked to brain disease.
“There is an urgent need to better understand the genetic risk of psychiatric disorders. Towards this, we [Dr. Brennand and her team] integrate human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-based approaches with CRISPR-engineering, in order to resolve the convergence and synergy of disease risk variants within and between the cell types of the brain,” said Dr. Brennand. “Overall, we hope to improve diagnostics, predict clinical trajectories, and identify pathways that could serve as pre-symptomatic points of therapeutic intervention.” You can discover more about Dr. Brennand and her team’s research at Brennand Laboratory.
Graduate students working in the autism field also presented their work through two engaging poster sessions.
Ellen Wilkinson, graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program and a member of the LifeSPAN ASD Lab, presented her team’s work on “Depression and Anxiety Treatment Options for Autistic Adults”. According to Wilkinson, currently autistic adults don’t have many options to help them treat depression and other mental stresses that stem from living with autism. Ellen and the LifeSPAN ASD Lab hope to develop more treatment options in this space to better the lives of adults with autism.
“I went to the first ASD Symposium last year. The theme this year is staying strong and bringing together all kinds of autism researchers with different perspectives. Having a variety of autism researchers in one space is unique and valuable to me because I get to learn new things from all their research and step outside my own studies,” said Wilkinson.
Justin Koesterich, graduate student in the Genetics PhD program, showcased his work on “Leveraging Massively Parallel Reporter Assays for Characterizing Non-Coding Regulatory Variation in Autism” and was excited to meet fellow researchers and students to discuss potential collaborations.
“I like to be on the lookout for symposiums where I can present my autism research. I discovered the ASD Symposium last year and wanted to attend again. This symposium fosters collaboration between labs at Rutgers and it’s a perfect place for me to present my research and see who else might be interested in collaborating,” said Koesterich.
Rutgers University Center for Autism Research, Education, and Services was established out of a need to address the autism spectrum disorder in New Jersey and the world. The RUCARES Annual Autism Symposium serves to spread knowledge and further develop research collaborations across Rutgers that will lead to new discoveries.
“Few universities have the breadth and scope of research, educational, and clinical services pertaining to autism available at Rutgers...RUCARES was created to help integrate the various autism programs at Rutgers and create synergies that will enhance the overall quality of our research, educational, and clinical programs and ultimately improve the lives of individuals with autism and their families,” added Fisher.
The symposium strives to showcase excellent new work being done on autism at Rutgers while developing future collaborations among Rutgers researchers.
“The Office for Research is sponsoring this and other events to facilitate collaboration among researchers, including students, and to keep supporting Rutgers as the academic, health, and research powerhouse we are while maintaining our highest standards of excellence,” added Zwick.
More information about the symposium organizers can be found below:
Organizers
Rutgers University Center for Autism Research, Education, and Services (RUCARES)
Rutgers Office for Research
Rutgers Brain Health Institute
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Research Core Facilities
Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research (CAHBIR)
Rutgers Office for Research Core Facilities
