My name is Adam Bachstetter.
I am an assistant professor in the spinal cord and brain injury research center at the
University of Kentucky and I run my own lab.
So this is the Bachstetter lab.
My dad was a carpenter.
There wasn't really anybody in my family who were scientists or doctors so I didn't really
have a lot of influence of any role models that I could think of.
So science wasn't something that was in my original plan.
As a kid I actually wanted to go into the FBI.
I was really, still am obsessed with TV law shows and I think the FBI was something that
I thought would be really fun to do and I was really into mixed martial arts at the
time so I thought oh this is a way I can use my skills.
I went to college in Columbus, Ohio at Capital University.
It's a small liberal arts college.
As an undergrad I was in a psychology program because I was pre law and I went to work in
a neuroscience lab as an internship and it was just, that was the experience that sparked
my interest.
And I was studying neurons and looking at really is one of the classic ways to look
at neurons which is the Golgi stain which was how the neuron doctrine was really established
and just being able to see the neurons and then just looking at them.
It's just such a beautiful experience and it really just got me excited about it and
that was the end.
And then I did my graduate work at the University of South Florida and when I started my postdoctoral
work at North Western University and then moved here to University of Kentucky finished
some postdoctoral work.
Being my own PI it's really great being able to mentor students and working and interacting
with the team and being able to have them interact with other colleagues that I have
and teach them new techniques and allow them to explore and grow as a scientist themselves
which is really what I'm here for more is to really help them grow.
I'm still at the beginning stages of my career so I'm lucky to able to both get into the
lab a little bit more than I'll be able to later.
A lot of days are spent writing and reviewing papers and directing my post doc and other
members of the lab and helping them design their experiments.
It's more of I'm here to help facilitate them to design how they're going to conduct their
experiments and teach them how those experiments should run.
The most challenging aspect of research is when you really have been working on an idea
for a while and you have a strong feeling that it will work but you just can't figure
out what is the step that is making it not and you're just, so it's most challenging
also the most exciting.
You saw my post doc came in and she's like ah ha it finally worked today and that's what
is really exciting.
We're really interested in how cells other than the neurons, so the glial cells and this
immune cell called the microglia interact with neurons to contribute to the development
of diseases particularly age related diseases like Alzheimer's disease.
And we're working on how traumatic brain injury might alter those cells in some way, either
damage the cell or cause a recruitment in the case of the microglial or microphage to
the brain and that those cells may contribute to the development of disease progression
for Alzheimer's disease or make it so that you're at a greater risk for developing Alzheimer's
disease or other age related neurodegenerative diseases.
So we're focused on traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer's disease.
In our small instance it could go wider for other neuroscience but techniques that we're
developing could be used in other fields, could be used in non academic non science
even though we're looking the brain this could have a much wider aspect.
I think the future of our science is we're at the very early stages of understanding
how glial cells become dysfunctional.
What makes them not healthy.
And if we can figure out what are the processes, what are the signalling, what is the biochemistry
of this then we can start to develop ways to modify or target those processes, to develop
drugs that could potentially treat people who have had a traumatic brain injury or people
who are at risk for developing a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's disease.
UK's environment is just incredibly collaborative.
It's just a great place to work.
So many colleagues are always helping each other and working together and having that
support and that team and that environment, just everybody being family is, just makes
it a great place to be, and very productive place to be.