Date:  April 16, 2002 from 3:00 – 6:00 P.M.

Place:  Garren Auditorium, Basic Science Building, La Jolla Campus

Each year in the spring SIRA presents a free educational, interactive program for the community to showcase the SIRA research grantees and their projects for the past year. 

The grantees include undergraduate and medical students from the SIRA Student Investigator Program and UCSD faculty from the Faculty Start-up Program.

As part of their grant responsibilities, all of these grantees will present a poster describing their research efforts.  SIRA faculty members are also invited to present their research findings.  This year, at least twenty-four research posters will be on display providing an excellent opportunity to learn about the exciting medical research work being accomplished at UCSD through SIRA’s grant programs. 

To further our community’s understanding of the latest treatment and prevention strategies, SIRA will also present two brief lectures by noted SIRA faculty members.  Both of these lectures are directly related to issues of aging. There will be an opportunity for the audience to ask questions of the speakers.

This year, Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., will present a lecture entitled “The Physical and Psychological Impacts of Caregiving.”  As our population ages, issues related to caregiving have become of paramount importance.  Dr. Patterson is a Professor in Residence, Department of Psychiatry, UCSD, Research Psychologist, VA San Diego Healthcare System, and Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, SDSU.  He is presently working on a number of NIH funded projects that focus on older individuals.  His newest project is titled Functional Adaptation Skills Training, and seeks to determine if a 24–week group training program is effective in teaching everyday living skills to older patients with schizophrenia.

Our second speaker will be Robert L. Sah, M.D., Sc.D, who will make a presentation entitled “Treatment of Arthritis Using Bioengineered Cartilage Tissue.”  Dr. Sah is Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering and Institute for Biomedical Engineering, at UCSD.  This combination of expertise – engineering and medical research – is very exciting, and presents a real breakthrough in treating the ravages of osteoarthritis, the most frequent and debilitating malady experienced by our aging population.  Dr. Sah writes, “Age associated degeneration of articular cartilage, which is a critical factor in the development of osteoarthritis, is one of the most common diseases of humans,  although the reason is unknown.  Our recent studies indicate that age-associated fatigue and also biochemical modifications may be critical underlying factors.  The objective of the Cartilage Tissue Engineering laboratory at UCSD …is to study the biological processes of articular cartilage growth, aging, degeneration and repair, and attempt to harness natural processes to engineer the repair or replacement of damaged cartilage.”

Agenda

3:00 P.M.   Introduction to SIRA,  Dr. Daniel Kripke
3:15 P.M.  “The Physical and Psychological Impacts of Caregiving,” Dr. Thomas L. Patterson 
3:45 P.M.  “Treatment of Arthritis Using Bioengineered Cartilage Tissue,” Dr. Robert L. Sah
4:30 P.M.   Research Poster Session (Hallway)
4:30 P.M.   Exceptional Refreshments – finger food and beverages provided by UCSD Catering
6:00 P.M.   End