Healing Through Scientific Discovery
Eric Van Otterloo
McCord Research Foundation Scholar, University of Iowa
Eric Van Otterloo is a graduate student and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Iowa, and the recipient of one of four inaugural McCord Foundation Fellowships.
A native Iowan, Van Otterloo received a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in chemistry from Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa.
Van Otterloo was a student intern and research assistant at the University of Mississippi’s Medical Center Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior in 2004 and 2005-06 respectively. He also served as a teacher’s assistant in the Human Anatomy and Physiology Department at Dordt College. Van Otterloo conducted his senior research project at Dordt College, where he assessed microglial pathology found in the white matter of the orbitofrontal cortex of postmortem brain tissue from elderly depressed individuals.
His awards and honors include an Honors Scholarship at Dordt College and the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Fellowship Award from the University of Iowa.
Van Otterloo’s research interests include wound healing and the developmental processes of cells. His abstracts have been published in the University of Iowa Undergraduate Scientific Poster Competition, Grinnell College Poster Symposium, Society for Neuroscience, Neuroscience Research Day, Annual Midwest Developmental Biology Conference, and the Annual Zebrafish Conference.
Van Otterloo was a member of the Dordt College Student Council. He is currently a member of the Society for Developmental Biology and the Graduate Student Senate at the University of Iowa.
Van Otterloo is very pleased to remain in his native Iowa to pursue his Ph.D., something made possible in part by the McCord Research Foundation Fellowship. He looks forward to making a difference in people’s lives by expanding scientific thought in the area of wound healing.
The McCord Research Foundation provides fellowships to doctoral and post-doctoral students in the University of Iowa Biosciences Graduate School Program in the fields of Free Radical, Anatomy and Cell Biology.
Publications
Sabel JL, d'Alencon C, O'Brien E, Van Otterloo E, Lutz K, Schutte BC, Houston D, Cornell RA. Maternally supplied Interferon Regulatory Factor 6 is necessary for differentiation of primary superficial epithelium in Danio and Xenopus embryos. Developmental Biology. Accepted for publication (October 2008).
Van Otterloo E, O'Dwyer G, Stockmeier C, Steffens D, Krishnan KR, Rajkowska G. Neuronal Reductions in Elderly Depressed are Region Specific. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Submitted, under review (October 2008).