Accomplishments - May, 2026
Randy Burnside, an associate professor and director of the SIU School of Medicine’s Medical/Dental Education Preparatory Program (MEDPREP), will be the keynote speaker at the City of Carbondale’s annual Memorial Day service at Woodlawn Cemetery at 10 a.m. on Monday, May 25. Burnside is a U.S. Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm.
“Bearing Bloodlines: Ancestral Invocations,” a mystical, spirit-led film by Gregory Wendt, video producer and instructional technology specialist, Center for Teaching Excellence, with co-creators Barbara Bickel, an associate professor of art education emerita, and Tannis Hugill, premiered in April on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, and Vancouver in April with an online screening earlier this month. The September 2025 film, with the trailer, features Bickel and Hugill, descendants of colonial settlers, entering a journey toward reconciliation in “bringing healing to the legacy of the unprocessed trauma their ancestors brought to North America.” Additional screenings, including in Carbondale, and national and international film festivals are planned.
Matthew J. Young, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; researcher Carolyn Young; and graduate students Md. Mostafijur Rahman and Pabitra Khadka, all from the SIU School of Medicine-Carbondale Department of Biomedical Sciences, collaborated with partners at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to co-author a paper titled ”High-concentration MEHP triggers mtDNA depletion in undifferentiated HepaRG and C2C12 cultures and disrupts mitochondrial homeostasis in both HepaRG culture states.” The study was recently published in the journal “Toxicological Sciences.” The authors found that the phthalate contaminant metabolite, MEHP, causes cell-state-dependent toxicity, with early effects on cell density occurring at lower exposures than those required to cause mtDNA depletion, offering important insights for risk assessment.
