Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Dr. Georgiann Davis and Dr. Dan Welch are the 2013 Vaughnie Lindsay New Investigator awardees. Jerry Weinberg, associate provost for research and dean of the SIUE Graduate School, presented the awards which are worth $12,500 to each investigator.
Dr. Vaughnie Lindsay-Skinner is an emerita professor of the SIUE School of Business. The internal grants are made to tenure-track SIUE faculty members in order to recognize and support individual programs of research or creative activities. The awards recognize faculty members whose research or creative activities have the promise of making significant contributions to their fields of study and to SIUE in general.
Davis is an assistant professor in the department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies in SIUE’s College of Arts and Sciences. Welch is an assistant professor in the department of Growth, Development and Structure in the SIU School of Dental Medicine.
Davis is one of a few sociocultural scholars specializing in intersex studies. Her new project, “Children with Intersex Traits,” focuses on a group whose voices often go unheard in the medical world.
“Children are, quite simply, not included in research studies on intersexuality, but they are the ones most affected by medical protocols,” said Davis, a Chicago native who resides in Edwardsville.
Her study offers children with intersex traits a chance to be heard from a social scientific platform. She will gather data on how children with intersex traits understand and experience sex, gender and sexuality. She also will question how they relate to (and are constrained or empowered by) others in their lives, as well as how they understand the medical interventions suggested for or performed on them. Davis anticipates that this perspective will contribute to the understanding of how intersexuality is experienced and aid in assessing evaluation and necessity of medical interventions in contemporary society.
Davis joined SIUE in fall 2011 after earning a doctorate in sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Since joining SIUE, Davis has published five peer-reviewed articles and presented at national academic and intersex conferences. Her first book, tentatively titled The Dubious Diagnosis: How Intersex Became a Disorder of Sex Development, is under contract with New York University Press.
Welch currently serves as the course director for neuroanatomy and his current research project is “Underlying Central Nervous System Etiology of Bruxism.” It presents a foundation for research on bruxism, the involuntary gnashing and grinding of teeth.
According to Welch, untreated bruxism can lead to worn teeth, lost fillings, fractures, headaches and numerous types of temporomandibular disorders. As a pathway to understanding bruxism, he is examining the physiological mechanisms underlying chewing.
Welch hypothesizes that the network of nerve cells involved in regulating muscles during chewing might be shared with those that produce bruxism and that certain pathological conditions can affect the regulation of those movements. He will use intramuscular electromyogram (EMG) recordings and sonomicrometry measurements to create a detailed analysis of jaw movement in rats during mastication and bruxism. The results will create a behavioral assay to observe detailed jaw movement. These results will further Welch’s research toward determining the mechanisms involved in the causes of bruxism.
A Santa Monica, Calif., native, Welch resides in Edwardsville. He joined SIUE in 2011 after earning a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of California Riverside. He has two peer-reviewed articles submitted for publication. Welch has previously published in the Journal for Experimental Biology and has presented research findings at several neuroscience conferences.
