News & Publications

Community Resources Are Linked With Better Teen Mental Health
Left to right: Szoko and Culyba
Youths living in neighborhoods with more community assets — like parks, libraries, health services and
transportation options — were less likely to report feelings of hopelessness, according to a new JAMA Network Open study from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC.

12 Pitt Researchers Ranked Among the World’s Best Female Scientists
Left to right: Anne Newman, Jane Cauley, Karen Matthews
Twelve researchers from the University of Pittsburgh are included in Research.com’s 2024 ranking of the “best female scientists in the world,” based on data collected from a wide range of bibliometric sources. Position in the ranking is based on scholars’ H-index, which measures researchers’ productivity and citation...

Pitt Research Finds Physician Scientist Training Programs Boost Women’s Confidence
Some researchers and students in three of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s physician scientist training programs have been using their research skills to examine the effectiveness of their own education. And they are finding that having an extra year of basic science training embedded in medical education offers a significant increase in confidence, especially...

Pitt Launches New Center for Space Biomedicine With Afshin Beheshti at its Helm
By: Asher Jones
Afshin Beheshti will lead biomedical research at Pitt as director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s new Center for Space Biomedicine, one pillar of the Pitt Space initiative that launched this month.
The mission of the center, which also includes space engineering and space science, is to develop new technologies to make...

Double-Edged STING: Pitt Study Identifies New Pathway Involved in Aging
When the protein STING (pink) is activated, the transcription factor TFEB (green) is shuttled into the nucleus, where it stimulates the production of lysosomes. (CREDIT: Jay Xiaojun Tan).
By: Asher Jones
A protein called STING, previously shown to control a pathway that contributes to antiviral signaling, also plays an important role in cellular stress clearance...


Deep Brain Stimulation Instantly Improves Arm and Hand Function Post-Brain Injury
Pirondini (left) and González-Martínez (right.) Photos courtesy of UPMC.
Deep brain stimulation may provide immediate improvement in arm and hand strength and function weakened by traumatic brain injury or stroke, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers report today in Nature Communications.
Encouraging results from extensive tests in monkeys and...

Shekhar Announces School of Medicine’s Successes and Goals in State of the School Address, Highlighting Commercialization Efforts
“The vision for us is that through research, through education, through our clinical care, we want to radically improve health for the region and for the world,” Anantha Shekhar, Pitt’s senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, School of Medicine, told School of Medicine faculty members in his Sept. 24 State of the School address.

Pitt Study Is First to Record Signs of Concussion in Slap Fighters
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine experts analyzed visible signs of concussion in individuals participating in professional slap fighting competitions and reported the results in a paper published in JAMA Surgery this week.
Slap fighting is a combat sport involving hits to the head. As the first academic study to provide a quantifiable assessment of possible...

New Pitt Model May Help Find Treatments for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
Pitt researchers have made a step toward discovering effective treatments for a rapidly progressive and incurable neurodegenerative disease. In a paper published Sept. 18 in Nature Communications, a team led by Professor of Movement Disorders in Neurology Edward A. Burton, developed a novel zebrafish model of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).
Burton and his group...