Third-year graduate student Samuel Park has a 100 percent track record for grant funding. “The first and only grant application I ever wrote just got funded,” he said.

Park was awarded a National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse. This three-year fellowship includes funding of his graduate stipend and associated costs, and provides him with $2,500 per year to pursue his research, which focuses on neural signaling mechanisms.

“These awards are given to only a handful of select individuals across the country,” said Dr. Donald Kuhn, Park’s mentor and director of the NIDA-funded Drug Abuse Training Program in the Cellular and Clinical Neurobiology PhD program, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. “The award is intended to provide biomedical and behavioral research training experiences to predoctoral students committed to a career in scientific research. We are proud to have Sam representing our lab, our program, and our school.”

Park’s research, which builds upon previous work done in Dr. Kuhn’s lab, focuses on dopamine systems and their involvement in methamphetamine (MA) toxicity. Oxidative stress produces nitric oxide and superoxide, which then interact to produce a downstream reactant called peroxynitrite. This product damages the cells, lipid membranes and DNA, said Park. Furthermore, peroxynitrite reacts virtually instantaneously with the neurotransmitter dopamine to form the dopamine-quinone. Dopamine-quinone is also highly toxic to cells. “My primary goal is to decipher the relationship between peroxynitrite and dopamine to better understand neurotoxicity and the dangers of drug abuse,” Park said.

“I have always been interested in neurobiology, so I was happy to find work in this lab, studying neurotoxicity and oxidative stress,” said Park. “The exciting thing is this: the research has a clear application in drug abuse, but there are also applications for other neurologic diseases like Parkinson’s that involve oxidative stress and damage.”

Prior to joining WSU, Park completed a bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, earning majors in biology and philosophy. He then did one year of research at Harvard and the Dana Farber Institute in studies related to immunology, diabetes and cancer. He has been at Wayne State for four years as a predoctoral student and expects to finish his PhD next year.