Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Professor Beulah Leitch
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People, places and connections: The importance of networks and contacts for a healthy brain
About Professor Beulah Leitch's research:
Beulah is an internationally recognised neuroscientist researching brain synapses in health and disease. Brain cells (neurons) talk to each other at specialised connections called synapses enabling us to feel, react, think, learn, and form memories. Beulah is particularly interested in how altered synaptic proteins resulting from genetic mutations cause functional abnormalities underlying brain disorders such as epilepsy and associated comorbid behavioural and psychiatric disorders. Another focus of her research is on the synthesis of new proteins at synapses during synaptic plasticity and how altered local protein synthesis may contribute to synaptic dysfunction and cognitive deficits underlying degenerative brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Exploring the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying synaptic dysfunction in neural networks is fundamental to understanding many brain disorders and developing future treatment strategies.
Beulah has an international reputation for using cutting-edge, high-resolution imaging techniques for the detection of proteins at synapses. She has been an invited research scientist to several distinguished, world-renowned neuroscience institutes including the California Institute of Technology, USA, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan and the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany, Her most highly cited paper is in the prestigious journal Science with her collaborators at Max-Planck.
Professor Leitch was the Director of the Neuroscience Teaching Programme, one of the largest single major subjects in the University of Otago, from February 2021 to January 2024. She was also Chair of the Neuroscience Research Group in Anatomy, comprising thirteen laboratories, from 2014-2020.
This lecture will be followed with light refreshments, tea, coffee & juice.
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