Kevin Kit Parker doesn’t exactly look or sound like a Harvard
professor. Measuring in at 6’5”, he sports a beat-up pair of jeans and
speaks in a booming Southern drawl, often peppering his remarks with
self-deprecating humor as he describes his path from rural Conyers,
Ga., to Cambridge, Mass.
It all began junior year of high
school, when a red recruitment brochure from Boston University arrived
in the mail. Interested in biology and gadgets from an early age and
impressed by the reputation of the College of Engineering’s biomedical
engineering department, Parker applied to BU. But when he arrived in
Boston a year later, he felt lost.
“It was a big change to be
dropped off at 140 Bay State Road,” he recalls. “I had never taken a
taxicab before I came up here. Someone at Logan had to take me to the
cab stand and show me how to hail a cab.”
Parker (ENG’89) is
now Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at
Harvard University. He led a research team that in 2011 upended the
conventional wisdom about the cause of traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Whether
triggered by a collision on a football field in Nebraska or blast waves
from an improvised explosive device in Iraq, TBI affects millions of
people each year, often resulting in long-term neurological disorders
such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists had maintained
that TBI was caused by the puncturing of membranes surrounding nerve
cells in the brain,Explains what is a Fiber pigtail
pigtail, fiber pigtail color codes, fiber. leading to the cells’ eventual breakdown.
Parker
and his team showed the real mechanism behind TBI is a class of
cell-signaling, cell membrane–crossing proteins called integrins that
when disrupted by trauma set off a chain reaction that causes the
brain’s neural network to collapse—and in some cases,The new MIPP is a
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that need to be connected to active equipment. causes blood vessels in
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laid one on another like a potter working with coils of clay. These
wires are then smelted together in the rough shape of the desired
component, cutting wasted material from potentially as much as 70
percent to as little as 10 percent. published in leading journals in
August 2011, could yield new drug therapies that first responders could
apply in the immediate aftermath of injury to limit long-term damage.
Parker has more than an academic interest in TBI. In addition to being a researcher,Our Fiber Optic Splice Closure
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is also a U.Several ECU modifications were carried out and the 540bhp
version of the Volvo FH was selected, as it is required to drive not
only the truck, but also a high pressure jetting truck
and liquid ring vacuum pump.S. Army paratrooper who completed two tours
of duty in Afghanistan, and he has seen the effects of TBI on blast
victims. Concerned about these soldiers’ future health prospects, he
began studying TBI at the behest of a fellow soldier, Colonel Geoffrey
Ling, a U.S. Army neurologist specializing in brain trauma. Ling
oversees TBI research funding at the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense.