杏吧原创

You can have the best research facilities in the world and still be missing the essential element to the university experience鈥攖he interaction between faculty and students. This is the point of a university after all; just ask UMass Lowell researchers and students who have realized this message, such as Prof. Thomas Shea.

鈥淚 had a very good laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Wonderful people to interact with, excellent facilities, but when I came here to UMass Lowell, I saw what I was missing, and that was interaction with students,鈥� said Shea, director of the Center for Cellular Neurobiology and Neurodegeneration. 鈥淚鈥檒l bring one of my colleagues from NIH, where they have the best facilities in the world, and they鈥檒l come up and see the student population and they鈥檒l realize they鈥檙e missing that.鈥�

An alumnus of UMass Boston, Shea says his move to UMass Lowell was 鈥渓ike coming home,鈥� and that the interaction the faculty has with its students was 鈥渢he linchpin鈥� that made him want to come to the University.聽鈥淚 picked up my entire laboratory, my whole research center and relocated it here. Best move I ever made."

It was a good move for his students and his research, too. 鈥淎t UMass Lowell no one does things all on their own, it鈥檚 always a team,鈥� Shea says, pointing to the example of his fellow researcher, Prof. Sangmook Lee. Shea had mentored Lee while he was working on his Ph.D. at the University, and now credits him for the significant research contribution he has made. 鈥淟ee has been a cornerstone in all of our work for ten years,鈥� he says.聽

鈥淪o, one of the great advantages of UMass Lowell is its very diverse faculty,鈥� says Shea. 鈥淏ut in addition to the wonderful collaboration between the University Faculty, is that we encourage our students to engage with research, and so our very diverse student body too is part of that team.鈥�

There are at least four distinct areas of general research that undergraduates and graduates can be involved with in Shea鈥檚 lab: Alzheimer鈥檚 disease; Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease or motor neuron disease); basic brain development鈥攕tudying how the brain develops in the first place; and the new interface of brain cells with a computer that will run a robot.