Comedian Josh Blue on Disabled Athletes and Paralympics (among other things)

Comedian Josh Blue and Jon McCullough of Blaze Sports talk about their experiences as Paralympic athletes and more in this engaging, often humorous conversation (see YouTube video) held January 31, 2014, at Emory University. They are also joined by Benjamin Reiss, Professor of English and co-chair of the Disability Studies Initiative at Emory. Blue was a winner of the Last Comic Standing competition and a disability advocate. Blaze Sports is a Decatur nonprofit adaptive sports organization.

Emory’s Disability Studies Initiative is a new working group (beginning Fall 2013) generated across departments and schools that is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching by faculty and students. The Initiative is led by a group of faculty and students who are interested in the social, cultural, historical, political, and legal dimensions of disability in our world.

 

Dennis Liotta Named to National Academy of Inventors

Dennis Liotta, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry and executive director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, has been named to the 2013 class of National Academy of Inventors Fellows along with 143 innovators from 94 prestigious research universities, governmental agencies, and non-profit research institutions. Election to NAI Fellow status is an honor given to academic inventors who have created or helped to create or facilitate inventions that have had a positive impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.

Liotta, who has been at Emory since 1976, developed an HIV antiviral drug for the treatment of HIV called Emtriva, now used by more than 90 percent of HIV/AIDS patients in the United States. His collaborators in the project were postdoctoral researcher Woo-Baeg Choi and Emory virologist Raymond Schinazi (who was named a charter NAI Fellow in 2012). Liotta has also had a hand in developing therapies for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and hepatitis B in his lab at Emory. In addition to serving as the executive director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, Liotta also serves as the co-director of the Republic of South Africa Drug Discovery Training Program and acts as editor-in-chief of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. He was also recently inducted into the Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame. While at Emory, Liotta has received the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, the Emory University Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, and the Thomas Jefferson Award, among many others.

See full story at Emory News Center

Related Media

The Drug Discovery Process: Dennis Liotta on Emtriva (YouTube)