Jacob Rysted, a third year graduate student in the Department of Pharmacology, has been awarded a Predoctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association’s Midwest Affiliate for his project titled “The Role of Mitochondrial Ca2+ Uniporters MCU and MCUb in Neuronal Ca2+ Signaling and Stroke Associated Neurotoxicity."  One of the prevalent hypotheses in the field is that excessive release of glutamate in the affected brain regions induces robust Ca2+ flux into neurons via NMDA receptors and mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake causing mitochondrial Ca2+ overload , which ultimately leads to the activation of multiple neurotoxic mechanisms and cell death.