Biomedical engineer studying blunt and blast brain injuries
Originally from the European country of Belarus, Olga Liaudanskaya, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Cincinnati, always dreamed of being a scientist.
After finishing her graduate degree in materials science and engineering in Italy, she came to the United States for her postdoctoral program, where her research focused on the brain.
This led her to a faculty position at UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science. Recently, she was awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Defense for a project on the molecular mechanisms triggered by blunt force and blast brain injuries.
My drive for science is to do something that makes the life of another person a little bit better.
Olga Liaudanskaya, assistant professor of biomedical engineering
Olga Liaudanskaya is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Photo/Corrie Mayer/CEAS Marketing + Communications
She remembers becoming fascinated with the brain and Traumatic Brain Injury as an undergraduate student after watching a documentary in which Dr. Bennet Omalu discussed the impact of mild, repetitive injuries on the human brain, especially in professional football players.
”It was fascinating to me how the brain works, Dr. Omalu was my inspiration, that's what got me digging into brain trauma and how that works,” Liaudanskaya said.
Liaudanskaya's journey to UC was nothing short of fate. While she was a postdoctoral researcher at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, she began applying for full-time faculty positions. But her search was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to many positions being canceled.
The following year, something similar happened. After two years of applying, Liaudanskaya was ready to give up on her search. It was during her third year of trying that she attended a biomedical engineering conference and met the head of UC's Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tom Talavage.
”Tom came to my poster at the conference, and I talked to him about my work. Long story short, I got pre-interviewed by him while we were there, and in the blink of an eye I had a faculty job offer and I was coming to UC,” she said.
Olga Liaudanskaya is fascinated by the brain and Traumatic Brain Injury. Photo/Corrie Mayer/CEAS Marketing + Communications
Through her postdoc and into her faculty position, Liaudanskaya worked closely with her mentor, Aviva Symes, from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Shortly into Liaudanskaya's time at UC, Symes presented her with the opportunity to collaborate on a proposal that explored both blunt force and blast brain injuries. The former of which was Liaudanskaya's focus.
A large part of the proposal was to study mitochondrial dysfunction as well, something Liaudanskaya has great expertise in. After deep collaboration and reworking the proposal, Liaudanskaya learned that it was accepted, and she was receiving funding for this project.
”The big picture of this DoD grant is to get a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms that are activated or deactivated after different types of brain trauma,” she said.
To explore the different types of traumas, researchers use technology to replicate what the brain goes through when experiencing these types of repetitive injuries.
At Uniformed Services University, they utilize a blast tube to look at what military personnel are potentially exposed to when they are serving or in training. Collaborators at USU will look at how these impacts change brain cells, biology and function. Additionally, they are looking at the possibility of biomarkers or alterations in the brain post-impact that can be used to diagnose and protect military personnel. With the possibility of diagnoses, treatment options will also be explored.
”We want to see if we can mitigate the consequences of repetitive injury,” Liaudanskaya said. ”We are targeting potential treatments to rescue the phenotype or prevent neurodegeneration progression.”
In Liaudanskaya's lab at UC, she and her team will focus on blunt-induced brain injury. Photo/Corrie Mayer/CEAS Marketing + Communications
In Liaudanskaya’s lab, she and her team will focus on blunt-induced injury. This class of injury, in the example of military personnel, refers to not the blast itself, but if an individual were to be thrown from an area due to an explosion and hit their head.
However, blunt-force brain injuries are common in more than just military and can be a result of playing sports, car accidents and more. To study this, Liaudanskaya developed a complex in-vitro model that contains nearly every important cell type that is found in the brain. Using this model, she and her team can dissect specific cell contributions to design a treatment approach that is as targeted as possible.
Shortly before receiving the federal grant, Liaudanskaya also received a National Institutes of Health trailblazer award for young investigators. Under NIH funding, she is exploring the cell-specific neurodegenerative potential of mitochondria after traumatic brain injury, which can be applied to her new project to look deeper at cell behavior.
With advanced targeting, she can narrow down and look at things like metabolic and bioenergetic alterations on a cell-specific level to better understand brain activity after traumatic brain injury and potentially develop treatment options.
“My drive for science is to do something that makes the life of another person a little bit better,” she said.
Liaudanskaya shared that throughout the process of developing and fine-tuning her proposals, she was reminded of the value of persistence and collaboration. Her recent grants are a testament to her hard work over the last several years.
“I have also learned that crazy ideas are crazy for a reason,” she said. “A lot of them might be groundbreaking, or something nobody has ever done before, but do not give up.”
Featured image at top: Olga Liaudanskaya is an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering. Photo/Corrie Mayer/CEAS Marketing + Communications
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