The John Richard Binford Memorial Award

Amanda Brady is the recipient of the John Richard Binford Memorial Award. Named in honor of the former chairman of the Department of Psychology, this award recognizes a doctoral degree recipient who excels in scholarship and has contributed to other areas within the discipline such as leadership, teaching, or service.

Amanda has always been devoted to her education.  In high school, she attended a technical college course on Forensic Science.  Using what she learned in the course, she went on to develop two capstone projects in her undergraduate studies at the University of Northern Colorado.  One capstone led to a publication and an award from the University of Northern Colorado.  While she was still an undergraduate student, she also worked full-time at a pathology lab as a cytology assistant, where she discovered a passion for studying infectious diseases.  These experiences led to her joining the lab of Dr. Mathew Lawrenz in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Louisville.

As a graduate student, Amanda investigated how the bacteria that causes the disease known as plague, Yersinia pestis, alters the host immune response to promote the progression of disease.  Her research has expanded our knowledge on the host-pathogen interactions during plague and how our host innate immune system responds to infection.  Her research was recognized with an NIH T32 fellowship, an American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Future Leaders Mentoring Fellowship (FLMF), and a Carl Storm Underrepresented Minority Fellowship.  Her Ph.D. dissertation work contributed to five published manuscripts, and she was invited to give oral presentations on her research at multiple prestigious scientific conferences.

Amanda also has a passion for diversity and inclusion and was extensively involved in mentoring and leadership in community outreach programs during her graduate career.  As a T32 fellow, she organized the 2022 Inflammation and Pathogenesis T32 Colloquium, which highlighted the ongoing innovative immunology research at UofL.  She has mentored multiple trainees in microbiology, including two high school students who were fellows of the Louisville Science Pathway (LSP) program, a competitive high school summer research program designed to expose high school students to research and future career opportunities in the STEM fields.  In addition to her LSP activities, Amanda mentored other local high school students from underrepresented backgrounds with science fair projects for the Louisville Regional Science & Engineering Fair.  Amanda was also a mentor for the University of Louisville’s BIOMED-PREP program, providing guidance and support for underrepresented post-baccalaureate students to successfully transition into PhD programs.

Amanda was the second President for the UofL Chapter of the Society for Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), the only active chapter in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. SACNAS is a national organization that provides opportunities to aid Chicano/Hispanic and Native American students to obtain advanced degrees, careers, and equality in STEM fields.  Amanda was also the second student to become a voting member of the UofL Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), helping to ensure that research at the university was done safely.

Upon graduation, Amanda will continue her training as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus studying bacterial infections in diabetic patients.  She also plans to continue to support diversity and inclusion by taking her experiences from UofL to start the first chapter of SACNAS at the University of Colorado.