By Erin F. Jones, BA, IDDRC project manager
In collaboration with the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (WKC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (IDDRC) co-hosts a monthly collaborative “chalk talk” series to assist with facilitating discussion and engagement in research for students, fellows, staff members and faculty members throughout the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins communities.
Each month’s discussion is organized around a single topic and features presenters discussing some of their recent research. The January 2022 discussion focused on research related to gene-environment interactions, highlighted by our three presenters:
- Christine Ladd-Acosta, PhD, associate professor of the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and associate director for genomics at the WKC, who presented “Gene-environment interaction in autism spectrum disorder: Insights from the Study to Explore Early Development”
- Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who presented “Towards in vitro developmental neurotoxicity testing”
- Lena Smirnova, PhD, coordinator for Education and Microphysiological Systems Programs at the CAAT, who presented “Gene environmental interactions in autism: CHD8 and chlorpyrifos”
The IDDRC is delighted to support this series and excited by the ideas and collaborative research opportunities generated by these integrative discussions. Some of the topics slated for this year include suicide and safety, genomics, and metabolomics. The Neurodevelopmental/Wendy Klag Center Chalk Talk Series takes place on the fourth Monday of each month, from noon to 1 p.m., via Zoom. Please contact Meghana Shetty at mshetty1@jhu.edu for more information or to be added to the recurring Outlook appointment with access information.
