Larson receives achievement award from Society of Toxicology
Jennifer Larson was awarded the Women in Toxicology Graduate Student Achievement Award at the 2012 Society of Toxicology (SOT) meeting recently held in San Francisco. The Bismarck native is a fifth-year graduate student of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Jane R. Dunlevy is Larson’s faculty mentor.
The Society of Toxicology is a professional and scholarly organization of scientists from academic institutions, government and industry representing the great variety of scientists who practice toxicology in the United States and abroad. The SOT’s 2012 annual meeting brought together 7,320 toxicologists from the United States and more than 50 other countries.
The SOT award recognizes Larson’s demonstrated academic achievement in the field of toxicology and her leadership and service in her field of study and community. Larson’s research focuses on the toxic metals arsenite and cadmium, which are widely distributed in nature and have been implicated in a wide variety of human diseases including cancer. Her research focus is on the effects of arsenite and cadmium in bladder cancer. In addition, her work has explored the protein known as SPARC, which plays a key role in the development of tissues and organs in the human body. The observance of an over- or underabundance of SPARC in the human body has been noted by scientists as a precursor to a variety of metastatic cancers. The SOT noted Larson’s demonstrated academic achievement in toxicology through her three peer-reviewed manuscripts and two published abstracts.
She was invited to speak at the fall 2011 Northland Regional Society of Toxicology meeting held in Duluth, Minn., and she served as the chair of the neurotoxicology metals poster session at the 2012 Society of Toxicology annual meeting.
The SOT also recognized Larson for her leadership and service in the field by her inspiring others in the field of toxicology through laboratory supervision and training through the Short-term Educational Experiences in Research program for undergraduate students and through graduate student rotations. Larson has served on the Library Committee at UND and was chair of that committee. She has taught medical students and undergraduate students as a teaching assistant for the Medical Histology Laboratory and an instructor for the Indians Into Medicine Pathway Program. She has also served as a judge for middle and high school students’ exhibits at the North Dakota State Science and Engineering Fair held recently at UND, worked as a volunteer in the Occupational Therapy Department at Altru Health System, and served as a camp counselor for children who have lost a parent at Altru Hospice’s Camp Good Mourning.
— Denis MacLeod, assistant director, Office of Alumni and Community Relations, Medicine and Health Sciences, 777-2733, denis.macleod@med.und.edu.
