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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Disease patients during an intraoperative cognitive control task. They have shown that theta-frequency power increases during response inhibition, which is not seen during the control condition. As Surgical Director of the UAB Movement Disorders Program and Co-Director of the Consortium for Neuroengineering and Brain-Computer Interfaces UAB, her clinical and research interests are closely aligned. Dr. Bentley performs deep brain stimulation and epilepsy surgeries, leveraging the unique environments allowed by these surgeries to study cognitive network neurophysiology. She is also highly active in extramural roles. These include serving on NIH study sections as part of the early-career reviewer program, serving on her sub-specialty’s scientific program committee, participating as invited faculty at the Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience, serving on the Editorial Board for Journal of Neurosurgery: Case Lessons, and serving on the Executive Committee of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. As a woman in neurosurgery, Dr. Bentley represents only 12% of all neurosurgeons in the United States and Canada. Furthermore, as a surgeon-scientist, her role is markedly underrepresented in academic neurosurgery. Despite these challenges, Dr. Bentley's commitment to neuroscience is unwavering. Her laboratory looks forward to continuing rigorous scientific inquiry into cognitive brain networks, and they greatly appreciate the support and sponsorship of their academic communities. Cary Boyd-Shiwarski, MD, PhD University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (affiliation at time of recognition) About the awardee Cary Boyd-Shiwarski, MD, PhD has had a longstanding interest in renal physiology, starting with her PhD, then MD and now a career in Nephrology. She is an Assistant Professor in Medicine in the Renal-Electrolyte Division. In 2018, she was awarded a K08 grant to study With-No-Lysine (WNK) kinases in the distal kidney. Human mutations to WNK kinases have been implicated in inherited diseases of hypertension and hyperkalemia. Dr. Boyd-Shiwarski's laboratory uses cutting edge methods to study WNK kinases from the level of DNA all the way into animal models. They have made exciting discoveries that answer fundamental questions. At the molecular level they have found that WNK1 facilitates liquid-liquid phase separation to regulate cell volume during osmotic stress, and recently published the results in Cell. Another discovery they made was identifying how and why WNK1 precipitates into puncta in both mouse and human kidneys during dietary potassium depletion. They termed these puncta “WNK bodies” and found that they evolved to help maintain potassium homeostasis. This work was published in Molecular Biology of the Cell in 2018 and in BioRxiv in 2021. Dr. Boyd-Shiwarski is excited to take their benchtop discoveries and translate them into patient care. To achieve this, she is working to establish a Center for Kidney Genetics. The Center has already provided a diagnosis to many patients with renal diseases of unknown cause. The next phase will be to identify patients with variants of unknown significance and apply her basic science skills to help identify whether these variants are clinically relevant. Dr. Boyd-Shiwarski's 5-year plan includes obtaining R01 level funding to maintain her research, and to expand the Center for Kidney Genetics to include
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