Hi Reddit, my name is Natalia Trayanova, and I’m a professor of biomedical engineering and medicine at Johns Hopkins University. My lab uses predictive computer simulations to generate personalized virtual hearts of patients that have life-threatening arrhythmias. These first-of-their-kind virtual hearts are already being used in the clinic to assess patient risk of sudden cardiac death and to guide personalized anti-arrhythmia interventions. Simulation-driven engineering has put rockets in space, and airplanes in the sky. We trust engineering advances with our lives, however, when it comes to our own health, things are quite different. Computer simulations are rarely used in medicine. Our vision is to change this – we aim to bring computer simulations to the clinic, to make precise decisions for treatments for heart disease. We believe implementing an engineering data-driven simulation approach will increase the efficacy of diagnostic and clinical procedures for heart rhythm disorders and democratize the delivery of cardiac healthcare. You can learn more about our virtual heart approach in a recent TEDx talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSDMPxGGy3A], and in this video describing our pioneering approach [https://youtu.be/bX62KNOfdBs]. We hope our virtual hearts will become a routine tool in the clinic, improving patient outcomes, which would be an unprecedented merging of computational simulation and clinical medicine. It has been extraordinarily fulfilling to have transcended my role as scientist and engineer, to be working directly with physicians helping patients. This is an unexpected and an exhilarating place to be. I look forward to having you #AskMeAnything on April 2nd, 1 PM ET.

Hi Reddit, my name is Chris Ruff [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0000031/christopher-ruff], and I’m an anatomist and biological anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During my 35 years of teaching anatomy, I’ve seen many changes in how we introduce students to this subject. Anatomy forms the foundation for much of medicine, but can be difficult to learn, so finding the best ways to communicate that information is important. Dissection of cadavers has always been a key part of anatomical training, because of the realism and experience with the actual body that it involves. However, increasingly we also use computer software to reinforce or review anatomical structures or concepts. Recently, we have developed a new product that makes learning muscles and bones fun and interactive. It’s designed for both medical professionals and anatomy neophytes. [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/anatomy-app-offers-interactive-learning-from-johns-hopkins-expert] I’ll be back at 1 pm ET today to answer your questions.

Hi Reddit, we are Xingde Li (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0800034/xingde-li), professor of Biomedical Engineering and Wenxuan Liang, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Medicine majoring in biophotonics. Our lab works to improve endomicroscopy in the hopes of someday diminishing our dependencies on biopsies. We have recently developed two new endoscopic probes that have a potential to significantly improve imaging diagnostics. Our first probe uses the same basics from the two-photon microscope but in a much smaller footprint. Our prototype probe, 2mm in diameter, takes advantage of the cell’s own ability to glow and eliminates the need for traditional fluorophores – usually harmful to the human body. This allow us to directly visualize fine structural changes and monitor cell activity in vivo and in real time at histology level but without the need for tissue removal. (https://www.nature.com/articles/lsa201782) Our second probe is even smaller (approximately 500 µm in diameter) but offers us about four times higher resolution than other currently used devices. The small probe size eases the delivery of endoscope to small areas of the body. This can greatly reduce patient’s discomfort during the endoscopy procedure while also providing a high resolution and clear visualization of tissue microstructures. This is very important for detecting disease at early stages when tissue microstructural changes are subtle and the disease is still at a manageable stage. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01494-4 ) We will be back at 1pm ET today to answer your questions.

Hi Reddit, my name is Seth Blackshaw and I'm a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. My research focuses on identifying the network of genes that controls how different cell types in the hypothalamus are specified during embryonic development, and on using these findings to both identify how specific cell types regulate behavior and determine how they can be replaced in neurodegenerative disease. I became interested in this work because I am convinced that to understand how neural circuits work, we have to name and catalog their basic components -- the thousands of different cell types present in the brain. If we can figure out how these cell types are made, we can then understand which behaviors they regulate and how they do so. We study development of the hypothalamus because it is a master regulatory center for many interesting and medically important behaviors -- ranging from circadian timing to sleep to aggression. I recently published a paper on Nature describing newly identified brain cells in mice that play a major role in promoting sleep.. My team observed that a specialized type of neuron that had never been found in this area of the brain before appear to connect a part of the hypothalamus, called the zona incerta, to areas of the brain that control sleep and wakefulness. This discovery could lead to the development of new therapies to help people with sleep disorders, like insomnia and narcolepsy, which are caused by the dysfunction of similar sleep-regulating neurons. I look forward to answering your questions at 1pm ET

Hi Reddit, my name is Haig Kazazian and I’m a geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For the past 27 years, I’ve been studying human genetics and I am passionately committed to understanding how “jumping genes,” also known as retrotransposons, affect how genetic diseases manifest in my patients. These pieces of DNA are capable of moving around the genome and can potentially disrupt functional genes and lead to diseases like hemophilia and muscular dystrophy. Interesting fact about myself, in 1999, my colleague Arupa Ganguly and I received a “cease and desist” letter from Myriad Genetics, for studying the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes because they held the patent. We became the first plaintiffs in the 2013 Supreme Court Case, which unanimously ruled that naturally occurring DNA sequences aren’t patent eligible. More on the ruling here [ http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/details-on-association-for-molecular-pathology-v-myriad-genetics-inc/]. I’ve recently published a review on the last fifty years of “jumping gene” research and you can read all about it here: [http://www.fasebj.org/content/31/9/3712.full]. I’ll be back at 1pm ET today to answer your questions.

Hi Reddit, my name is King-Wai Yau, and I’m a neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine studying sight and smell! I started out in medical school at the University of Hong Kong but soon switched back to basic science and came to study in the U.S I have been studying vision for over 40 years, focusing on its first step, in which light interacts with the rod and cone receptor cells of the retina, initiating a complex biochemical/biophysical process which your brain eventually interprets as vision. However, we now know that additional photoreceptor cells beyond the rods and cones you learn in school actually exist in the retina. These newly found cells mediate eye functions unrelated to creating images, like constricting your pupil in response to changes in light. These non-rod/non-cone photoreceptors are important for helping us appreciate the progress of the day and, for example, in enabling us to get over jet-lag when traveling across time zones. Recently, my research has focused on understanding how light-induced pupillary constriction in mouse eyes can occur without the brain. Unlike in humans, mice’s pupils can constrict without an obligatory connection to the brain because light-detecting pigment, present in the iris’ sphincter muscle, responds directly to light. These findings shed light on the evolutionary path of the pupillary light reflex in vertebrates, which is essential for regulating light entry into the eye especially under bright conditions. Outside of the lab, although I hardly watch any commercial television, I would compulsively put aside work in the evening to watch Nature and Nova programs when they come up on Public Television. Any knowledge about biology, physics and chemistry is fair game to me! Check out my latest research here I’ll be back at 1pm ET today to answer your questions.

Hello Reddit, my name is David Linden and I’m a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In my lab, I study neural plasticity- the ability of the brain to be modified by experience- whether from learning, hibernation, hormonal fluctuations or injury. I have a long-standing interest in scientific communication and have served for years as the chief editor of The Journal of Neurophysiology. I’ve also written several books about neural function for a general audience including The Accidental Mind (2007), The Compass of Pleasure (2011) and Touch (2015). I find that scientists are trained to be meticulous when they speak about their work. That’s why I like getting my neuroscience colleagues tipsy. For years, after plying them with spirits, I’ve been asking brain researchers the same simple question: “What idea about brain function would you most like to explain to the world?” I’ve been delighted with their responses. They don’t delve into the minutiae of their latest experiments or lapse into nerd speak. They sit up a little straighter, open their eyes a little wider, and give clear, insightful, and often unpredictable or counterintuitive answers. A new book I’ve edited, called “Think Tank: 40 Neuroscientists Explore the Biological Roots of Human Experience” (Yale Press, 2018) is the result of those conversations. I’ve invited a group of the world’s leading neuroscientists, my dream team of thoughtful, erudite, and clear-thinking researchers, to answer that key question in the form of a short essay. I have encouraged each author to choose her or his own topic to tell the scientific story that she or he is burning to share in clear and compelling language. Lets’ talk brains, behavior and scientific communication. I look forward to having you #AskMeAnything on April 30th, 1 PM ET.

Hi Reddit, we are Karen Swartz, M.D., a psychiatrist and founder of the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program (ADAP) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland and Holly Wilcox, PhD, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who led the randomized controlled trial to evaluate ADAP’s effectiveness in high schools. We are excited to discuss the importance of depression education and high school students and the potential to facilitate young people receiving treatment following our program. Depression is estimated to affect over 10% of teens in the United States. In addition to interrupting functioning socially, academically, and emotionally, untreated depression dramatically increases the risk of suicide in adolescents. Recognizing and treating depression is an effective strategy for preventing suicide among teenagers. Karen and colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins developed the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program (ADAP), a three-hour curriculum to educate high school students about depression typically taught in health classes. Holly led an independent assessment of the program’s effectiveness and designed the study. In our study, schools were randomly assigned to receive the program in either year one or year two so that the effectiveness of the program could be compared between these two groups. Over 6,000 students from 54 schools in five states participated. Our study demonstrated that there is a significant change in knowledge about depression following the program; this improvement in knowledge was sustained at a four month follow-up. Importantly, 46% of teachers reported that a student spoke to them about getting help for themselves her friend following the program. Our results were published in the December 2017 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. We are excited to be working together to bring depression education to more students across the country. In addition to our ongoing expansion of the high school program, we are working to develop a new depression education program for middle school programs. We look forward to answering your questions at 1pm ET Jan 8th

Hi Reddit, my name is Siobhán Cooke, and I’m an anatomy professor and paleontologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. My research (mostly) focuses on two things: 1) The evolution and eventual extinction of the native mammals of the Caribbean region including monkeys, giant sloths, rodents, and tiny (and not so tiny) shrews. Recently, my colleagues and I published a paper demonstrating that humans likely played a role in the extinction of many of these animals just 6000 years ago. (http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110316-022754). 2) Teeth and jaws! Often all paleontologists find in the fossil record are teeth, and so we use a variety of modeling methods to get as much information out of them as possible. Some of this information is even applicable to understanding how our own teeth and jaws function. I also spend much of my time during the late summer and early fall teaching human anatomy to our medical students. Ever wonder what it is like to try to recover fossils from caves? Why do paleontologists care about teeth so much? And what does any of this have to do with teaching a gross anatomy to medical students? I look forward to having you Ask Me Anything on December 11th, 1 PM ET.

Hi Reddit, my name is Mark Bicket, M.D., I'm director of the Pain Medicine Fellowship training program at Hopkins. My research focuses on treatments of acute and chronic pain, including prescription opioids for pain and how those medications are taken by patients and supplied by prescribers. Recently, I led an investigation on what happens to opioids prescribed for pain after surgery in JAMA Surgery. Our team found that most opioid pills remained unused after patients recovered from their procedures, and most patients did not dispose of the unused pills. It's important to improve pain relief while balancing the risks and problems from opioids, as many of us know someone affected by the opioid crisis. I look forward to answering your questions at 1pm ET

Hi Reddit, We are Alan Scott, Ph.D., a geneticist and Associate Professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and Stacie Robison, Ph.D., a research ecologist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program at the Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. We are bringing you this coast-to-coast AMA to talk about how knowing the genome of an organism can tell us a lot about their biology and help inform conservationists who work to protect endangered animals. Hawaiian monk seals are an endangered species unique to the Hawaiian archipelago (there are only about 1,400 left, and they don’t live anywhere else). Stacie works to increase our understanding of monk seals’ biology, the things that threaten them and the effectiveness of conservation efforts. Stacie studies everything about monk seals from what they eat, to how they breed, to how disease impacts them, to where they travel. Alan led the collaborative effort to develop a faster way to sequence the DNA of organisms at 1/100,000th of what it originally cost to sequence the human genome and started with the Monk Seal. The genome was publically released on July 7 by NCBI. We plan to use these new genomics techniques to sequence the genomes of many more endangered species. We are excited to be working together to help scientists understand the evolutionary history, genetic diversity and population trends in this species. We’ll be back at 1pm ET today to answer your questions.​