Published May 23, 2013 This content is archived.
Two PhD candidates and a recent graduate of the Neuroscience Program will be honored with Beverly Petterson Bishop and Charles W. Bishop Neuroscience Fund Awards.
The Bishop Fund supports university-wide efforts and excellence in neuroscience, and helps ensure that neuroscience remains a major focus at UB.
Awardees are recognized during UB’s Neuroscience Research Day, held each fall.
Peter Vento, PhD, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina, received a $500 thesis award.
Vento’s doctoral research, defended in January 2013, focused on the effects of repeated exposure of the hormone angiotensin II on drinking behavior in rats.
His research shows that repeated angiotensin II injections lead to behavioral desensitization.
Vento’s work in this area resulted in four first-author publications (with a fifth manuscript forthcoming) and nine presenting-author conference abstracts.
As a graduate student, Vento won the Bishop Award for best talk at the 2009 Neuroscience Research Day.
He also received the Psychology Department’s Robert Rice Award for early excellence in research and successfully competed for a Mark Diamond Research Fund award.
During his graduate career at UB, Vento was a leader of the Neuroscience Graduate Student Association, serving as vice president in 2009-2010 and a senator in 2010-2011.
He participated in Brain Awareness Week for three years at Highgate Heights Elementary School.
In addition to teaching assistant duties, he was the behavioral neuroscience student representative on the Psychology Department’s Graduate Studies Committee and served on the Graduate Admissions Committee.
He also was a student member of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior and the Society for Neuroscience.
Jing Wang, a student in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Naomi McKay, a student in the Department of Psychology, each received $1,000 travel awards, allowing them to present posters describing their research at the upcoming meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
They are outstanding students who might otherwise not be able to travel due to funding limitations in their labs, says Susan Udin, professor of physiology and biophysics.
Charles W. Bishop, PhD, established the fund in honor of his wife, Beverly, a member of the UB faculty from 1957 until her death in 2008, and a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of physiology and biophysics.
Beverly Petterson Bishop, PhD ’58, was known for her significant contributions to neurophysiology research and for her dedication to teaching.