During his time at Brandeis School of Law, Smith was a 2008 scholarship recipient of the Louisville Black Law Students Association and taught “street law” at Central High School’s law magnet program, which earned him its 2009 Teacher Award.

Smith landed a Black Entertainment Television (BET) internship during school and volunteered with BET shortly after graduating. In August 2009, he was hired as a legal coordinator for BET’s “The Mo’Nique Show” in Atlanta.

Smith met industry celebrities including Kobe Bryant, Gabrielle Union and Beyoncé, and worked awards shows in Atlanta, Las Vegas and New York. After seven years at BET, Smith began working for MGM as a production attorney for “Paternity Court” and “Couples Court with the Cutlers.”

In October 2018, Smith’s efforts earned him the Brandeis School of Law Recent Alumnus Award, an honor recognizing graduates using their education to make an impact in their communities and industries.

“It means the world to me to be recognized for working hard,” Smith said. “I’m able to blend my legal education with what I love to do. It’s the best of both worlds.”

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After a Denver brewery tour, Andy realized there was nothing in Louisville tailored for tourists wanting to walk to and sample the city’s numerous bourbon establishments.

“You can take a bus to bourbon country and you can go to these distilleries which are beautiful,” Danielle said. “But we wanted to offer something a little more personal and a little more local.”

The group created a guided walking tour during which visitors can sample a variety of bourbons available from different bars and restaurants. 

“It has been a lot of work. We are not so busy that we are going to quit our [other] jobs and work full time, but we are also busy enough that it takes up a lot of our time. Right now, it’s in a good spot where we can have the best of both worlds,” Danielle said.

Danielle adds that she enjoys every aspect of her side hustle, from the bourbon tasting to showing off Louisville, and especially the people she meets.

“We love the groups we have,” she said. “When they ask us to have a drink with them after, or they book another tour, that is truly the best compliment we can receive.” 

Standard tours are offered on Saturday afternoons at 2 p.m., but the group can customize group tours at additional times. The three-stop walking tour typically lasts 1.5 to 2 hours. Mini tours and special events are also offered. .

Read more and connect to Louisville Alumni.

An epidural stimulator implanted on his spine allowed Marquis to move his paralyzed legs. After a while, he was able to step with his right leg on his own, while the trainers helped his left leg keep up.

“I was feeling pretty good about it. I was stepping with my right foot,” Marquis said. “I said to the trainers, ‘Let me try the left.’ I got it on the second step,” Marquis said. “Getting that was a big deal.”

The movement was small but the moment was monumental. Most physicians and scientists would have said it was impossible, yet it had just happened.

“It’s what everybody had been waiting for — a paralyzed person was walking,” said Angeli, assistant professor in the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center (KSCIRC).

Those initial steps were the first that Marquis had taken independently in six years. The therapy to get him to that point was the culmination of years of work by the research team, led by Susan Harkema, who has studied the effects of epidural stimulation in spinal cord injury for more than a decade at UofL.

The historic moment came and went quickly, however. More motivated than ever, Marquis and the team focused on continuing the training session. There was more work to be done.

The right stuff

Nearly 6,000 people who suffer complete spinal cord injuries in the United States each year are told they will not walk again. Many of them are young victims of a car crash, fall, sports injury or other accident that abruptly takes away their mobility, health and independence. Recovery from a chronic complete injury — one that leaves individuals unable to move below the injured portion of the spine for more than a year — was not considered possible before this research.

Before his accident, Marquis was an independent outdoorsman working as a chef and in a ski shop in Whitefish, Montana, where he was an avid kayaker, mountain biker, skier and snowboarder. In 2011, he was biking on a mountain trail when he missed a jump and landed on his head. The accident left him quadriplegic. He was unable to move his legs and had limited mobility in his arms and hands.

“After my injury, I needed help twice a day. Living in Montana, the same things that had attracted me to the area became a big challenge. Everything revolved around the sports I couldn’t do anymore, and the weather was difficult to deal with in the winter,” Marquis said.

From her earliest research as a neuroscientist at UCLA, Harkema was motivated to help people with complete spinal cord injuries achieve recovery. Since she joined UofL in 2005, Harkema has used her understanding of how spinal circuits function to explore new possibilities for healing.

“For years I have believed the spinal cord has the capacity to recover. Our goal has been to get people with motor-complete spinal cord injuries to walk again,” Harkema said. “Since I started this research 25 years ago, this is what we have hoped to see.”

Based in KSCIRC’s research lab at Frazier Rehab Institute, Harkema and the research team conducted the first human tests using epidural stimulation. In 2009 Rob Summers, who had been completely para-lyzed since being hit by a car three years before, was the first human to be implanted with an epidural stimulator for spinal cord injury. The stimulator allowed Summers to stand and voluntarily move his legs. The research also included stand training and locomotor training, physically moving his legs in a walking pattern.

Three other research participants received stimulator implants and also were able to stand and move voluntarily. Yet none was able to take steps on his own.

“The challenge with walking and stepping was finding the right stimulation configuration, finding those parameters within the electrode and the frequency and the voltage, which is different for everyone,” Angeli said. “And the coordination of the right and left legs.”

Shortly after his accident, Marquis had heard about the research at UofL and added his name to the research database. He had spent months in rehab, but recovery was slow. In 2014, he got the call to participate in the research.

“I was mostly just on the hamster wheel trying to get some recovery and not seeing any progress,” Marquis said. “So the research was something I could do to help other people in my situation and make better use of my time.”

After receiving the implant in 2015, he completed 278 locomotor training sessions over 18 months before becoming in 2017 the first person with complete paralysis to walk over ground. After taking his first bilateral steps on the treadmill, he gradually was able to support his body weight and walk over ground using poles, steadied by the trainers, to balance himself.

“It’s been as hard as they sold it to be, but it’s been very rewarding,” Marquis said. “I kind of like that hard work and physical exertion. The physical part is almost the easy part; the mental part is the hard part — to stay motivated.”

Just a few months after Marquis took his first steps, a second participant, Kelly Thomas, also took her first independent steps since a 2014 car crash left her paralyzed. A paraplegic, Thomas has use of her arms to help in her training. Her journey from implant to walking over ground took three and a half months and 81 training sessions.

Thomas said the effort it took to get to the point of walking was tremendous.

“When you’re physically drained and just done — or you think you are — you have to say, ‘No you’re not,’ ” Thomas said. “I’m a faithful person and I prayed myself through some of my sessions. Whenever my mental state was going down or my physical state was going down, I would tell the other, ‘You take the lead because we have a session to finish.’ ”

Like Marquis, Thomas found that steps came more easily on one side than the other.

“The right leg came pretty easy. The left leg I really, really had to work for,” Thomas said. “The day I got that left leg through, I cried. I got my hip, knee, ankle all coming together at the same time for both legs. It was like fireworks!”

For the research team, the goal of having someone who was completely paralyzed take steps on their own had been achieved — twice.

Harkema and Angeli credit the participants with much of the research’s success.

“They relocate to Louisville at their own expense to take part in this research with no guarantee of any personal benefit,” Harkema said. “They dedicate their time and bodies to help advance knowledge. Without them the work would be impossible.”

“They are the ones who come in every day to train and put in the effort. It’s their willingness to be here and help us understand more that makes this a successful program,” Angeli said.

Moving forward

Despite the remarkable levels of recovery they’ve made, both Marquis and Thomas hope for more.

Part of Marquis’ motivation is that he wants to regain his independence. One of the most difficult aspects of life after his accident was the fact that he needed help twice a day for basic tasks of life — getting out of bed, preparing food and cleaning.

The training and stimulator have restored much of his independence. His strength and stamina have increased to the point he can cook and bake again at his Louisville condo. And he no longer needs daily — or even weekly — help at home.

“I never liked having other people around all the time,” he said. “They were great, but I would rather do things for myself. I’m really glad that I don’t need that assistance anymore.”

Marquis still uses the poles for balance when he walks several times a week in the research facility, and he stands on his own at home using a specially designed frame. He now is taking part in cardiovascular research with the stimulator at KSCIRC; he hopes that work will improve his breathing and stamina even more, enabling him to walk longer distances.

Thomas is back home, living on her family’s Florida ranch, attending college with the goal of a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and working on her own to improve her mobility. Having gained confidence walking with only a walker, Thomas is comfortable moving around the ranch and in public places.

“I am still walking a lot,” Thomas said. “I was wondering how it would be all on my own, having no one there who knew how to assist me. But I am a lot more confident than when I left Kentucky. I am able to walk faster and go into more stressful environments, such as walking into a department store or restaurant.”

Thomas’s mother, Therese, said she used to worry about her daughter regularly.

“Before, I would call her constantly, wondering if she had fallen and couldn’t get back up, or worried she would choke and we weren’t there to help her,” Therese said.

She no longer worries, thanks to Kelly’s increased strength and stamina from the stimulator and training. “She spends a lot of time alone, and we have been able to take a deep breath and not worry every second we aren’t with her,” Therese added.

Following their implants, Thomas and Marquis both noticed overall health improvements, faster healing and increased stamina and temperature regulation. In addition to mobility, research at UofL is showing epidural stimulation improves other health issues that typically accompany spinal cord injury, such as cardiovascular, bowel, bladder, sexual, respiratory and immune functions. A major study is underway at UofL to learn more about these effects of epidural stimulation in 36 additional research participants.

Harkema and Angeli both say they want to see epidural stimulation improve the lives of more people with spinal cord injury. Making this therapy available to the public will involve more advanced stimulator technology, Food and Drug Administration approval, insurance coverage for the treatment and training for physicians. For this to happen, more successful cases are needed, along with a better understanding of which patients are most likely to benefit.

“This research shows there is the capacity for people who have been injured for years to recover,” Harkema said. “Now we need to know how far recovery can go and how much function can be restored.”

Thomas, who plans to attend law school, says she is happy carrying on with life.

“I really feel blessed because I have been able to turn the worst thing that ever happened to me into pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me,” Thomas said. “I have been able to encourage so many people without even realizing it.”

***

HOW THEY WALKED

There are three components to the research that got the patients to take their first steps.

1. First, the electronics. An electrode array is implanted on a portion of the lower spinal cord that controls movement of the hips, knees, ankles and toes. The array is connected to a control device implanted in the abdomen. The epidural electrical stimulation makes the spinal cord receptive to external stimulation and training.

2. Next comes locomotor training, in which the participant’s body weight is supported in a harness over a treadmill while trainers move the knees and feet to simulate walking. This repetitive stepping motion retrains the spinal cord in the pattern of walking.

3. Finally, the participant must have the active mental intent to move and take steps. As the participants’ ability increases, body weight support is reduced and trainers gradually withdraw assistance. Once stepping on the treadmill is mastered, participants may advance to walking over ground.

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Luckily for Bird, the Brown Fellows Program answered his call, promising a strong foundation on which to construct his dreams.

“The Brown Foundation trusted me at the age of 18 to do something that I believed in or was passionate about and gave me $6,000 to do it,” Bird said.

The Brown Fellows scholarship program is in its 10th year of success since its founding through the generosity of the James Graham Brown Foundation in 2009. The foundation wanted to provide opportunities to students at a public university and a private university, and selected UofL and Centre College to be its beneficiaries.

The program annually offers 10 UofL students and 10 Centre students the chance of a lifetime by providing them with financial aid to attend college and pursue their most ambitious dreams.

The program incorporates a leadership retreat; an international trip; two individual enrichment experiences; faculty mentoring; and Kentucky Connection, a travel program designed to help Fellows become ambassadors to the Commonwealth.

“Everybody gets to college supposedly knowing what they want to do, but not everyone knows what they can do,” said Andrew Grubb, senior academic coordinator for the Brown Fellows. “When the Brown Foundation comes in and tells you you can apply for $6,000 for two summers, when they take you to France, when they take you all over Kentucky, you find out a whole lot about what you can do and how big the world is — and you have the means to do whatever you want in it.”

Fostering growth and fellowship

Jessica Eaton ’13 was in the first class to complete the Brown Fellows Program. Eaton, now a University of Washington neurosurgery resident, easily recalls the influence that being a Brown Fellow had on her life.

“The way it started for us, our class in particular, was so different from anyone else’s experience,” Eaton said. “So the fact that it was so amazing and life-changing was really special. I always felt like I was really lucky because something amazing just fell into my lap.”

Eaton’s “amazing” began with a whirlwind trip to Panama, designed to let the fellows bond and develop leadership skills. Since then, the Brown Fellows have moved the international trip to the second year of the program, and expanded the team-building aspect into “Eudaimonia,” a leadership retreat and college introductory program where the fellows from UofL and Centre meet the summer before freshman year. Eudaimonia is a Greek philosophical principle centered on flourishing, or being the best version of one’s self.

During two weeks — one on each campus — the fellows participate in leadership training, community service and team-building activities. The goal is to turn the individual fellows into a close-knit group, which helps them broaden their perspectives across disciplines, solidify their support system throughout college and supplement their individual drives for success after graduation.

Eaton believes the relationships formed with her fellow Fellows is part of what made her who she is today.

“One of the most special things about Brown Fellows was how close you got to your peers,” she said. “I probably see Jackie Orth [’15], who was a couple classes below me, the most often. She recently happened to be running a half marathon in the Oregon wine country that I was at because my husband was running, and we spent the afternoon together wine-tasting and catching up.”

Along with finding lifelong friends and mentors, Eaton credits the Brown Fellow program’s focus on Eudaimonia — being her best self — with her accomplishments since graduation.

“I fully attribute those past experiences to my success in interviewing for positions in neurosurgery, and don’t think I would be where I am today — at one of the best neurosurgery residency programs in the country — without the opportunities that Brown Fellows gave me,” she said.

Learning in the global classroom

While a voyage to Panama is no longer the starting point for Brown Fellows, an international trip has remained a cornerstone of the program. The summer following freshman year, the fellows embark on an excursion where they learn to navigate a foreign nation, immerse themselves in a new culture and form bonds that could potentially last a lifetime.

Carmen Mitchell, a School of Public Health and Information Sciences doctoral student and class of 2014 fellow, recalls the impact of her class’s trip to Vietnam.

“Looking back, one of the most valuable things I got from Brown Fellows was the connections,” Mitchell said. “I hope we can work to continue to expand our alumni network so we can start becoming that network for the younger fellows.”

Kavonte Jones, a junior chemical engineering student, is one of those younger fellows. He visited Strasbourg, France with his peers in 2017. He had heard the international trip could be transformative, and that is exactly what he experienced.

During an outing to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp near Strasbourg, Jones had what he calls his defining moment as a Brown Fellow. Standing in the scenic mountains that surround the World War II concentration camp, Jones was struck by the dichot-omy of the dark history of the site and the cheerful demeanors of his companions and other tourists.

“The day itself was gorgeous. If not for the history of the concentration camp, it would have been picture-worthy,” Jones said. “A lot of people were doing that [taking pictures] but it was the time spent walking through the camp that brought a somber mood. Even here, we sometimes look away and ignore the brutal reality that’s happened. I realized that sometimes you have to look a little deeper than what you’re offered or what you’re told.”

As Jones sets his sights on future aspirations, he takes care to remember the people who preceded him and opened doors for him to pursue his dreams today. That one-day visit in Strasbourg changed his entire outlook on life.

“I will always try to my best to see the situation that’s going on, to acknowledge what’s good and what’s wrong in the world. To just keep in mind the history of where I am and where I’ve been,” Jones said.

Standing on their own

While much of the Brown Fellows program allows the students to bond with their peers, a significant part of the program is the individual enrichment experience. Each Brown Fellow is provided a $6,000 stipend they can use for each of their upperclass summers to explore any interest they have. The enrichment experiences almost always involve travel, whether to work in an internship or geared toward their academic and service goals.

“These enrichment experiences are really the crown jewel of the program. This is what sets the Brown Fellows apart,” Grubb said. “Being able to get ahold of $6,000 and go do whatever you can draw up, that’s something really special.”

Jones used his first enrichment experience to volunteer in Peru, where he mapped canal systems. For his upcoming enrichment experience, he plans to travel to Mexico, stopping at the U.S.-Mexico border to gain a better understanding of the political situation there before visiting the Herradura tequila distillery to gain working experience that will help him prepare for a career in distilling.

Bird used his enrichment experience to further his academic goals. “I used it as a very purposeful exercise in expanding things that I was passionate about, but had neither the financial means nor the educational experience to get here on my own dime,” he said.

He spent his first project working at the White House Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, D.C. where he completed research on federal sustainability as an intern during the Obama administration. He was fascinated by the decisions made by the small group of professionals that would impact the nation’s policy regarding environmental protection.

The Council on Environmental Quality gig inspired him to spend a second summer in the Netherlands, studying sustainable building design. Thanks to that research project, he spent a third summer working at the U.S. Green Building Council developing LEED: the most widely used green building rating system in the world.

“I don’t think that opportunity came to me just because I was an engineer. It was definitely because of the opportunities from that Brown Fellows enrichment project,” he said.

Bird graduates in May and accepted a position as a structural engineer at Silman Structural Engineers, which works on the Smith-sonian museums as well as re-use and preservation projects. From his internships in Washington, D.C. and his research in the Neth-erlands, to his time serving as part of U.S. Green Building Council, Bird can trace his success back to each portion of the Brown Fellows program and the once-in-a-lifetime experiences they provided.

“I think back, had I gone to another school, I don’t see how I could have earned or received the trust that they purposefully give you,” Bird said. “That’s one of the big values of Brown Fellows — trust in your pursuit to do something that hasn’t been done before, that amplifies your experience as a student and that distinguishes the state of Kentucky and UofL.”

At UofL, big ideas don’t stay in the classroom or lab. Rather, they grow — into new research-backed technologies; into companies led by faculty, staff, students and alumni; and into innovative collaborations with outside organizations. 

“UofL is a thriving innovation ecosystem,” said Robert S. Keynton, interim executive vice president for research and innovation. “UofL provides resources to guide and grow those big ideas into realized products, startups, collaborations and industrial partnerships, each with an impact that reaches far beyond our campus.”

Many big ideas are generated through research. UofL ranks as one of only 120 U.S. “Research 1” universities with “very high research activity,” according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher ����ֱ��.

That research activity has spawned technologies for a variety of fields, ranging from materials to medicine. Take, for example, the can-cer-targeting nanoparticle technology, dubbed “ALAN,” now licensed to California biotech company Qualigen Inc.

Even outside of research, UofL students, faculty, staff and alumni are chock-full of big ideas. Consider Pascal Tags, a startup founded by a recent grad and a current student, who invented the technology with a faculty adviser. Or Appriss Inc., an international victim notifica-tion company founded and led by Cardinal alums.

Other big ideas come from collaborations with off-campus partners. UofL often works with industry on projects or even on full-fledged innovation centers, like those opened by Kindred Healthcare Inc. and GE Appliances, a Haier company. The latter’s FirstBuild makerspace and microfactory, on the Belknap Campus, gives students a chance to further develop the skills they learn in the classroom by working on projects and developing new products. Meanwhile, the company benefits from students’ fresh perspectives.

“Our goal at UofL is to get those ideas from mind to market,” said Allen Morris, director of UofL’s Commercial-ization EPI-Center, which helps protect UofL inventions and find commercial partners.

A golden idea

California-based medical device company Qualigen Inc. has licensed a drug technology developed at UofL that uses tiny, DNA-coated gold nanoparticles to target cancer.

“We have very high hopes that working together, with the strengths that we have at Qualigen and what UofL has here with the research center, that we can do something good going forward,” said Michael Poirier, the company’s president and CEO.

Paula Bates, a professor of medicine, worked with a team of researchers from the School of Medicine and J.B. Speed School of Engineering to develop the technology, dubbed “ALAN” (for Aptamer-Linked Au Nanoparticles).

“The key is that the ALAN technology can kill cancer cells but not normal cells,” Bates said. Many currently available treatments may also harm healthy, non-cancerous tissue.

The ALAN aptamer itself has been previously tested in more than 100 patients and has had no evidence of severe side effects. At least seven of those patients either saw their cancers disappear or shrink substantially.

In the new ALAN technology, the aptamer — a short, single-stranded piece of DNA — is attached to gold, which should make it more durable and active than the original formulation. The new ALAN formulation is expected to enter clinical trials by 2020.

The team worked with the UofL Commercialization EPI-Center to protect and commercialize their intellectual property. Qualigen also has a sponsored research agreement with UofL for further development.

Tag, they’re it

For J.B. Speed School of Engineering student Brandon Young, it all started with a weekend business pitch competition. Today, he’s at the helm of Pascal Tags, an up-and-coming startup with a smart tracking technology he helped invent.

Pascal Tags was founded by Young and College of Business graduate Haley Pfeiffer ’18. After they won Startup Weekend, a whirlwind two-day competition, they decided to make a real go of it.

“Making a company, being able to push and compete against start-ups that have been around for years is something that’s just been mind-blowing for me,” Young said.

The company is working on a battery-free, smart tag technology, invented by Young and his faculty mentor, Thad Druffel, who also is theme leader for solar manufacturing R&D at the UofL Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research. The technology is
meant to help companies track inventory. 

The team worked closely with UofL’s Commercialization EPI-Center and also used UofL entrepreneurship training and translational research programs.

Since that first competition, Pascal has been busy racking up honors, including a Vogt Award, reaching the finals in the Collegiate Inventors Challenge and taking first in the 5 Across statewide pitch competition.

“We are so excited to see the community supporting and believing in Pascal Tags,” Pfeiffer said. “We can’t wait to see what the future holds.”

Justice through data

Mike Davis ’84 and Yung Nguyen ’86, ’88, ’90 founded  Appriss Inc. in 1993, in response to local news reports about Mary Byron, a young woman murdered by her ex-boyfriend after he was released from jail.

“Mike and I thought we could develop an automated victim notification system that could address that issue,” Nguyen said.

Davis, who studied computer science/data processing, and Nguyen, who studied computer engineering and mathematics put their education to work and invented VINE, a platform that notifies victims when their offenders are released from jail. “Everything I learned about computers at that time, I learned from Speed School,” Nguyen said.

They formed their own company, working in Nguyen’s basement after their normal workday. They eventually went full time, and today have grown Appriss into a data company with corporate headquarters in Louisville and offices on two continents.

Building success

FirstBuild makerspace and microfactory is often a whir of activity. Makers use 3D printers, laser cutters and other tools to bring their ideas to life or to work on new innovations for GE Appliances.

The space is the birthplace of new products such as the Paragon induction cooker and the popular Opal Ice Nugget Maker.

“Our products that are manufactured here at FirstBuild have actually been made by University of Louisville students,” said its director, Larry Portaro.

Because the center is on Belknap Campus, students can gain experience through intern-ships and by visiting for classes or to work on their own projects. Meanwhile, having students at FirstBuild brings “a tremendous amount of passion and creativity,” Portaro said.

When the center opened in 2014, the idea was to reduce the cost and time needed to develop new products — and validate market demand ahead of time — through a combination of crowd-funding, open innovation and hands-on collaboration with students and other makers.

Two research teams have made recent discoveries related to cancer prevention, and both are seeing success in early animal trials.

Testing a vaccine

Two UofL researchers developed a stable and scalable vaccine that is proving effective at preventing certain cancerous tumor growth in mice. So far, the researchers have tested the
vaccine against lung cancer and melanoma, and 80 to 100 percent of the vaccinated mice used in each trial were cancer free when compared with the nonvaccinated control group.

Prevention of tumor growth is key because, while conventional treatments and therapies may kill most of the cancer, a small percentage of cells are resistant. Those are cancer stem cells, which have the ability to reproduce and sustain the cancer.

“Those cells sit there, and they have the capability of regrowing the entire tumor by themselves,” said assistant professor of medicine Kavitha Yaddanapudi, co-inventor of the vaccine. 

A vaccine, on the other hand, can help the body build immunity to cancer before it develops.

The vaccine they developed has been through several iterations. The team has reworked and streamlined it, giving it a longer shelf life and more stability, and making it easy to create in large quantities.

“We tried to simplify, simplify, simplify,” said Chi Li, co-inventor and associate professor of medicine.

The research team, which received grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, hopes to develop the vaccine to be effective against all cancer types and to test the vaccine in human trials.

The group also has collaborated with the UofL Commercialization EPI-Center to protect and commercialize the intellectual property.

“It has been a pleasure to work with this outstanding team of researchers from their initial discovery through its current development,” said Allen Morris, the center’s director. “Their new technology has the potential to dramatically advance the field of cancer immunization.”

A tumor immune surveillance system

Another research team has discovered an immune stimulator molecule that, administered by itself, protects against the future development of multiple types of cancer.

Previously, in pre-clinical animal testing, the recombinant protein molecule, SA-4-1BBL, enhanced the efficacy of cancer vaccines by boosting the effectiveness of adaptive immune cells trained to target a cancerous tumor for destruction. However, when the researchers treated normal, healthy mice with SA-4-1BBL alone, they were protected when later exposed to different types of tumor cells.

“The novelty we are reporting is the ability of this molecule to generate an immune response that patrols the body for the presence of rare tumor cells and to eliminate cancer before it takes hold in the body,” said Haval Shirwan, professor of microbiology and immunology. “Generally, the immune system will need to be exposed to the tumor, recognize the tumor as dangerous, and then generate an adaptive tumor-specific response to eliminate the tumor that is recognizes. Thus, our new finding is very surprising because the immune system has not seen a tumor, so the response is not to the presence of a tumor.”

Shirwan and Esma Yolcu, associate professor and co-author of the study, determined the molecule generates a tumor immune surveillance system that activates cells to protect the mice against various cancer types they have never had.

In the research, mice that had never had cancer were treated with SA-4-1BBL alone, then cervical and lung cancer tumor cells were introduced at various time intervals. The mice showed significant protection against tumor development, with the cancer immunoprevention effect lasting more than eight weeks. The research was published in the journal “Cancer Research.”

Although the research, which was conducted in collaboration with FasCure Therapeutics LLC, tested the mice for cervical and lung cancers, the protective function of SA-4-1BBL has the potential to be effective in preventing any number of tumor types.

See more from Shirwan and Yolcu. 

Women and children can shower, do laundry, use computers and receive help with services at the Uniting Partners for Women and Children (UP) space downtown that opened mid-2018, thanks to social work alumna Andrea Scott ’16 and Amy Meredith ’00, a justice administration graduate.

Many overnight shelters close to occupants during the day. Although a daytime center served homeless men, there was not a comparable, safe place where women could go during that time. As a student, Scott discovered that void when she did her Kent School of Social Work practicum with Family Health Centers.

She later joined forces with Meredith, who altered her career path to help empower these women. After conducting a needs assessment in camps and other “frontline” areas and working with the Coalition for the Homeless and other groups, Meredith and Scott launched the UP shelter, open initially for three days a week. They estimated UP might serve 200 people in its first year, but that number was surpassed within the first few months of operation.

“This is a truly safe space,” Scott said. “It’s one of the only times during their day they are not harassed.” To help but not re-victimize, “we take a very trauma-informed approach, using the social work model of ‘meeting them where they are.’ ” About half are fleeing domestic violence. “It’s hard,” Meredith said. “When you’re in crisis, you need an advocate.”

The center also helps the women navigate systems that already exist and get connected to other resources and agencies. “We do a lot of connecting around here,” Scott said. Meanwhile, west of downtown in a former settlement house, UofL social work professors and advisory board members Maurice Gattis and Emma Sterrett-Hong envision its renovation into a shelter that will open in early 2020 and serve 22 young people aged 18 to 24.

The emergency shelter, named after the nickname of Lexington transgender pioneer James Herndon, will operate as Sweet Evening Breeze Inc., a fiscally sponsored project of the Community Foundation of Louisville Inc.

The shelter board works to provide an LGBT-affirming, welcoming haven for the young adults, where they can feel physically and emotionally safe while receiving counseling and life skills training.

Estimates show 20 to 40 percent of youth living on the streets identify as LGBT, Gattis said. Rejected by relatives or aged out of foster care, many have been kicked out of homes. And being homeless puts them at greater risk of victimization and harassment.

Gattis has collected data on home-less and LGBT populations in Toronto, Milwaukee and Louisville. A shelter for people who need it is “an intervention informed by research,” he said. “I recognize this is an opportunity to intervene.”

Sterrett-Hong’s research focuses on intergenerational relationships and mentoring with marginalized, vulnerable groups. Grateful to people who aided in her work, she said she felt “a sense of responsibility. I needed to do something tangible [to help].” 

For Steele, that was the start of a lifelong obsession with space — a celestial wanderlust she’s now working to fulfill as an astrophysics doctoral candidate at UofL.

“Say what you want to do, show up and see what happens,” said Steele, a NASA KY Space Grant Graduate Fellow.

Today, she studies celestial bodies over beer from False Idol Independent Brewers, the Louisville-based brewery she owns with her husband. Astrophysics was her dream, the brewery was his, and they decided to pursue both.

The pair partnered with vegan food truck, V-Grits, to open the brewpub in late 2018. In 2017, Steele enrolled in classes at UofL.

“We were undeterred,” Steele said. “But it meant we had two life transitions at the same time.”

Before astrophysics and the brewery, Steele had trained and worked as an engineer. In her free time, she thought about space, volunteering with the Louisville Astronomical Society and working with Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana to develop their first STEM badge.

Now that she’s pursuing her doctorate, Steele’s engineering background allows her to bring unique and “crazy ideas” into her research. She is working with advisor Benne Holwerda, associate professor of physics, to study gravitational lensing, the bending of light around space objects.

“This is an engineering problem to me,” Steele said.

Steele theorizes that if we can figure out all the mechanics of gravitational lensing, we could potentially manipu-late it to induce or remove gravity here on Earth.

Steele has already started her candidacy exams, and after earning her PhD, she envisions using her back-ground in entrepreneurship to build a space-based startup company.

“This is a huge experiment,” Steele said. “It’s fun.”

A total of $6 million in donations from the Oxley Foundation, along with a $2.5 million match from the UofL Foundation, fund the CEHD programs in the SPI schools. Westport Middle School is the only SPI middle school, bridging the gap between the SPI elementary schools — J.B. Atkinson Academy, Cochran and Portland — and one high school, The Academy@Shawnee.

With a school system as large as Jefferson County Public Schools, it would be impossible to follow all the elementary students in SPI schools through to upper grades. However, many of the students who benefit from CEHD initiatives in elementary schools feed into Westport, where UofL’s involvement has helped stem the tide of teacher turnover and grow a more experienced workforce.

“It’s like growing your own,” said Penny Howell, associate professor of middle-level education and professor-in-residence at Westport Middle. Howell teaches classes such as “Teaching Middle School” in Westport one day a week. The rest of her time is spent on Belknap Campus.

UofL students at Westport who aspire to be middle school teachers say the immersive experience is crucial to their future success.

“Middle school, in particular, is a different breed of child and a different breed of human, so being able to interact with them one-on-one and seeing what a classroom looks like, it gave me a better idea of what I was getting myself into and what my career was going to look like,” education major Sarah Cottrell said.

Tipton is completing his under-graduate degree in biology and psychology before continuing on to medical school at UofL this fall. He is a member of the student-led philanthropic group raiseRED, as well as the Student Government Association and is a peer mentor with REACH (Resources for Academic Achievement).

“I was raised in a Louisville environment. I couldn’t imagine going anywhere else,” Tipton said. “Nothing has brought me more pride than being a Louisville Cardinal.”

Griffiths is a sports administration major who has spent the past four years working for the UofL Football Office, while also volunteering with raiseRED, The Lord’s Kitchen and the American Cancer Society. She also is a student ambassador for the university.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to be a tour guide for the past two years, so I get to sell this place every single day… I tell them Louisville is a place where everyone feels like they have a place,” Griffiths said.