Dr. Leslie S. Lerea
Becomes SPIRE Coordinator

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Seeding Postdoctoral Innovators in Research and Education (SPIRE), the new postdoctoral training program within PMABS, is up and running! The first addition to the program is Dr. Leslie S. Lerea, who assumed the coordinator's position on November 1, 1999.

Dr. Lerea received her Ph.D. from the Department of Pharmacology at UNC-Chapel Hill in the late 1980s and completed postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt and Duke Universities. she remained at Duke, where--as a Research Associate in the Department of Medicine--she worked on intracellular signaling mechanisms involved in glutamate receptor mediated gene induction. Until recently Dr. Lerea was actively involved in neuroscience research, using state-of-the-art molecular techniques to study gene expression.

Following a brief family leave of absence, Dr. Lerea reevaluated her longer term career goals and realized that she wanted to become involved in aspects of science that might have a broader impact than she could achieve at the bench. Science education and diversity in her profession have always been issues of importance to Dr. Lerea. Joining the SPIRE team to help implement fundamental changes in postdoctoral training is the opportunity she has been looking for.

SPIRE is designed to support PMABS' partner universities in their development of underrepresented students in the life sciences. Mentored by HMU biology faculty, SPIRE post-docs will bring their research and instructional training to classrooms at partner HMUs. Recruitment of postdoctoral fellows for the SPIRE program began in August 1999, with the hope of filling eight initial positions the first year and increasing to twelve by the second year. The response was so overwhelming, that eleven SPIRE fellows have already been appointed. They will be joining the program in 2000.

[Archived: Spring 2000]