Sports Nightly interview

Ronnie Green Author

08/27/2019 Added

184 Plays

Description

Ronnie Green and his guest, Biological Systems Engineering Professor Angie Pannier, talk about her research and the recognition she recently earned from the White House.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.350]Welcome back, Sports Nightly here
[00:00:01.370]in the Husker Sport Center, and we are thrilled
[00:00:03.360]to be joined by a couple of very special
[00:00:04.810]guests in our studio here today.
[00:00:06.270]We're gonna start with University of Nebraska
[00:00:08.160]Lincoln chancellor Ronnie Green.
[00:00:09.860]Here we are, school year's underway.
[00:00:11.480]I know you get really excited for the first week of school.
[00:00:14.270]Well, you know, when you have 56 hundred new
[00:00:17.790]freshmen coming back and rolling into town,
[00:00:20.760]you know, a couple weeks ago we started
[00:00:22.120]to hear the drum beat. You can start hearing
[00:00:24.360]the drum beat on campus, it puts your pulse in place, right?
[00:00:27.750]So it's exciting to have classes underway again at Nebraska,
[00:00:31.880]we've got another record year coming at us,
[00:00:34.080]that we're excited about.
[00:00:36.320]Campus is buzzing with energy with all those students,
[00:00:38.850]and the breadth of our faculty back, you know.
[00:00:41.127]When we think about the breadth of where our students
[00:00:43.990]come from, and the talent that is in our student body,
[00:00:47.350]combined with the talent that is in
[00:00:49.260]our world-class faculty, across the board
[00:00:52.110]and across all of our academic colleges.
[00:00:54.760]This is just a really special place to be,
[00:00:57.910]at this university, and of course, you know,
[00:01:00.310]we've got this little thing called athletics
[00:01:02.360]kicking into gear with the red white scrimmage
[00:01:05.710]we just finished up in volleyball,
[00:01:07.220]and we've got volleyball team kicking off, literally,
[00:01:11.740]serving off I guess I should say,
[00:01:13.570]on Friday, with their first game.
[00:01:15.710]And football coming up here just in a few days.
[00:01:18.070]Gonna be fun, gonna be a great time.
[00:01:19.368]This is the time of year, chancellor,
[00:01:20.570]where we hear a lot of, oh, this volleyball player's
[00:01:23.210]a preseason All-American, or this
[00:01:24.670]football player's a preseason American,
[00:01:26.140]we hear all about that. But today,
[00:01:27.900]you brought with you a special guest,
[00:01:29.520]a member of your faculty,
[00:01:30.880]who recently received a pretty impressive national award.
[00:01:33.930]I'm gonna let you introduce our guest.
[00:01:36.080]Well, you know Greg, like I said a minute ago,
[00:01:38.800]we have 22 hundred, over 22 hundred world-leading
[00:01:42.570]faculty on our land grant University campus,
[00:01:46.080]across a comprehensive range of fields,
[00:01:48.370]and recently, one of our, what I'll call still young
[00:01:52.570]faculty received a really prestigious honor.
[00:01:57.340]Dr Angie Pannier, who is a professor of
[00:01:59.970]biological systems engineering in our engineering college,
[00:02:03.040]and in the institute of Ag and Natural Resources.
[00:02:06.810]First thing I want you to always know about Angie
[00:02:09.160]is that she's a Nebraskan, and she's a Husker,
[00:02:12.580]through and through, native of Fremont,
[00:02:16.580]she has a tremendous career that she already has had
[00:02:20.510]and I can't even imagine what the rest of her career
[00:02:23.490]is going to look like in her field.
[00:02:26.330]She's a real pioneer in her field,
[00:02:28.630]as you're gonna get a chance to hear
[00:02:30.200]from her about today.
[00:02:32.280]And this summer, she was highlighted
[00:02:35.070]with a very prestigious award,
[00:02:36.870]she was among 300 young researchers from across the US
[00:02:40.920]who were recognized by president Trump,
[00:02:43.530]with a Presidential Early Career Award
[00:02:46.130]for Scientists and Engineers.
[00:02:47.640]It's the highest honor given by the US Government
[00:02:51.320]for early career scientists, and the first
[00:02:54.970]Nebraskan to receive this award.
[00:02:57.160]This is not the first, one of the first that
[00:02:59.690]Dr Pannier has had, in this year
[00:03:02.070]she had another first award with NIH,
[00:03:04.850]National Institutes of Health, this year as well.
[00:03:06.960]So I'm just delighted and very proud
[00:03:09.460]of Angie and her accomplishments.
[00:03:11.500]I'm really glad she could be with us on the program today.
[00:03:13.850]Absolutely, Dr Pannier it's great to have you with us.
[00:03:15.940]Congratulations on your Early Career Award
[00:03:17.779]for Scientists and Engineering.
[00:03:19.730]I know that you hope that this research
[00:03:22.010]is going to help treat some diseases,
[00:03:24.570]and change people's lives, tell us about this.
[00:03:27.050]Sure, thank you, it's great to be here.
[00:03:29.777]Our research really focuses on trying to engineer
[00:03:32.490]adult stem cells for therapies, and so
[00:03:34.960]there's, you know, a lot of excitement
[00:03:37.160]in the field of cell therapy and medicine
[00:03:39.490]that adult tissues, like bone marrow and fat,
[00:03:42.260]have these stem cells that have properties
[00:03:44.360]that are proposed to be able to be used as therapies.
[00:03:49.477]However, those cells need a little bit of coaxing,
[00:03:52.130]a little bit of help to do that function, and so
[00:03:55.370]we're really focused on how to transfer
[00:03:56.930]genetic information, or DNA, into those cells
[00:03:59.700]in an effective and safe way, so that we can sort of
[00:04:02.350]engineer those stem cells to go
[00:04:05.010]to where they need to in the body for healing.
[00:04:06.750]So they've been proposed as a way to heal
[00:04:10.440]after heart attacks, or to treat cancer,
[00:04:12.770]or Alzheimer's, or whatever, grow replacement cartilage
[00:04:15.880]for knees and hips, and so these cells have this potential
[00:04:19.150]but we really are working to try to engineer those cells
[00:04:23.270]to specifically heal some of those diseases or tissues,
[00:04:26.620]and so we're really focused on the mechanisms
[00:04:29.170]to transfer DNA into these cells.
[00:04:32.430]How did you get started doing this,
[00:04:34.660]what spurred this for you?
[00:04:36.450]Well, I mean, science and engineering I was
[00:04:38.880]always in high school interested in math, science
[00:04:41.450]and physics, but I didn't know
[00:04:43.010]what I wanted to do with that, and I had a really
[00:04:45.190]outstanding physics teacher who started talking
[00:04:47.120]to me about engineering, how you could use
[00:04:49.250]your love of math, science and physics and solve problems
[00:04:52.070]that are relevant to people, and a lot of people
[00:04:54.460]were pushing me into the medical field,
[00:04:56.040]and I said, you know, I'd like
[00:04:57.110]to help people but maybe from afar.
[00:04:59.140]Maybe I don't want to touch the sick people
[00:05:00.900]but maybe my technologies could help them,
[00:05:02.540]and so I really got interested at that point
[00:05:04.510]in biomedical engineering, and then, you know,
[00:05:06.720]throughout undergrad and graduate school
[00:05:08.210]I just had some really great faculty members
[00:05:10.541]here at Nebraska and then in graduate school.
[00:05:13.180]That helped kinda set me on this path towards DNA transfer.
[00:05:16.230]Also DNA transfer is very challenging and hard
[00:05:18.410]and I like a good challenge, so.
[00:05:21.540]The chancellor mentioned you're from Fremont,
[00:05:23.270]so you're back at your alma mater.
[00:05:25.140]You could do this anywhere.
[00:05:26.649]Yeah.
[00:05:27.482]Why here?
[00:05:28.315]You know, the University of Nebraska Lincoln
[00:05:30.910]changed my life, I came from a smaller town
[00:05:34.510]and I would've never imagined this was my life,
[00:05:38.130]or that I would be doing this research,
[00:05:40.380]or going to DC, to the White House to receive an award.
[00:05:43.890]Nothing that you ever really set out
[00:05:45.230]or imagine for yourself, but I just felt that
[00:05:47.844]Nebraska had such a great, not only are the curriculum
[00:05:52.370]and the opportunities great, but the faculty
[00:05:55.157]are world-class and yet are totally dedicated
[00:05:58.550]to eduction, and so that's felt at a student level,
[00:06:02.360]I think it's felt at a faculty level,
[00:06:03.640]it's felt at the administrator level,
[00:06:05.010]and so as a student here, I just couldn't believe
[00:06:07.590]the opportunities that were opening up in my life
[00:06:09.290]'cause I was a student here.
[00:06:10.430]And so then when given the chance to come back
[00:06:12.640]as a faculty member, I just jumped at it,
[00:06:14.456]I couldn't believe that I could be a faculty member
[00:06:17.630]at an institution that gave me everything.
[00:06:20.010]Which was also kind of big shoes to fill,
[00:06:22.180]I was a little overwhelmed when I came back.
[00:06:23.710]I wanted to be as good as all
[00:06:24.740]the faculty members that I had.
[00:06:27.070]It's just been a fantastic place to start my career
[00:06:29.940]and to really build it.
[00:06:31.200]And chancellor, this is, I mean,
[00:06:33.000]having faculty members like Angie,
[00:06:35.350]that's what makes this a special place, isn't it?
[00:06:37.690]Well, it sure does,
[00:06:38.550]and Angie's pretty humble, you know,
[00:06:41.300]she's a world-class teacher, an educator,
[00:06:45.290]both for undergraduates and for graduate students.
[00:06:48.550]She's a world-class researcher, part of that mission
[00:06:51.610]that we have as a land grant university.
[00:06:54.060]I could point to hundreds of faculty around our campus
[00:06:58.730]who are mentoring and developing the next generation
[00:07:02.140]in that way, but it's just a super honor for Angie.
[00:07:05.570]She, in her spare time, you know, she's also been
[00:07:08.720]one of the four faculty co-leaders
[00:07:10.850]across the university campus this year
[00:07:13.100]that's helping to firm up and develop our five-year
[00:07:16.160]road map for the university campus.
[00:07:18.700]So, just very, very proud of Angie and all of our faculty
[00:07:22.630]across the University of Nebraska.
[00:07:24.540]Fantastic. Dr Pannier, again, congratulations,
[00:07:26.580]thank you for coming and sharing your story with us.
[00:07:28.250]Absolutely, thank you.
[00:07:29.610]Chancellor, great to see you, we'll see you
[00:07:31.270]on Saturday for kickoff.
[00:07:32.550]Absolutely, go Big Red.
[00:07:33.950]Ronnie Green with us here on Sports Nightly
[00:07:35.750]we're back with more next.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Sports Nightly interview

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments