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Roskamp Institute Announces Enrollment of First Students to Participate in its Innovative Research Doctorate Program

Posted on: Thursday, 18 June 2009, 13:37 CDT

Florida's First Three-Year Neuroscience Research Doctorate Program

SARASOTA, Fla., June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Sarasota's Roskamp Institute (Roskamp) today announced the first enrollment of students in its pioneering three-year Ph.D. program through which students will conduct full-time laboratory research with direct mentoring from internationally-recognized scientists. Roskamp is an Affiliated Research Centre (ARC) of the United Kingdom's Open University (OU) and was recently granted a license from the Commission for Independent Education within the Florida Department of Education to begin this program.

"Roskamp has always played a significant role in training and mentoring top quality students, and we are delighted to now have a formal degree-awarding program," said Dr. Fiona Crawford, associate director of Roskamp. "With the enrollment of our first successful applicants, we look forward to further enhancing the Institute and its many partners and collaborators in Florida, as well as the local developing biotechnology community."

"Our Ph.D. program brings the opportunity for postgraduate research students to participate in a one-of-a-kind program that will expose them to a world-class research facility," said Dr. Michael Mullan, director of Roskamp. "They will work side-by-side with exceptional scientists, perform hands-on, laboratory-based research and gain the practical knowledge necessary to succeed in their area of research, and emerge as fully operational professionals."

The Institute has enrolled three students in its Ph.D. program, which will expose them to Roskamp's state-of-the-art technology and will allow them to gain knowledge of the Institute's key divisions, including chemistry, proteomics and molecular biology. The first class of students in the program will pursue dissertation research on Gulf War Syndrome, Traumatic Brain Injury and Alzheimer's disease.

Laila Abdullah, M.S., is a graduate of the University of South Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a master's in Epidemiology. Abdullah is studying the biological cause of the chronic and complex health problems that Persian Gulf War veterans experience compared to other veterans, using both standard molecular biology and advanced proteomic technology.

Scott Ferguson is a graduate of the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Micro/Molecular Biology. Ferguson is studying how brain proteins respond to traumatic injury in order to identify new ways to treat the long-term consequences of these injuries which are of such high prevalence in the military and civilian populations.

Nowell Ganey, who is a graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Science, is building on the seminal work of lead Institute scientists by exploring the mechanisms linking vascular factors to the development of Alzheimer's disease.

OU has a 110 acre campus in Milton Keynes, England, and is also a distance learning university and the leading eLearning University in the U.K. for its quality of teaching. With the addition of Roskamp, there are 24 OU ARCs around the world. In addition to the research degree programs, OU is a very large teaching university. More than 2 million students have studied at OU since its inception in 1971. The OU is accredited by the U.S. Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

Roskamp is a not-for-profit research Institute located in Sarasota, Fla., that is dedicated to understanding the causes of, and finding cures for, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders with an emphasis on Alzheimer's disease. The Institute's Memory Clinic also offers comprehensive cognitive and medical assessment toward differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and offers treatments and disease management options once the diagnostic evaluation is complete.

For more information, please contact the Institute at (941) 752-2949, Roskamp's Clinical Trials Division in Sarasota at (941) 256-8018 or visit www.RoskampInstitute.com.

SOURCE Roskamp Institute

Source: PR Newswire

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