Sports Nightly interview

Ronnie Green Author

08/27/2019 Added

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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.

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[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.

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