What Motivates UK Vice President for Research Lisa Cassis?

When Lisa Cassis isn’t in her cardiovascular research lab, you’ll find her leading the research enterprise at the University of Kentucky. 

How does the UK researcher balance her time in the lab and in the office? What motivates her each morning? 

Watch the video above to find out what keeps Cassis motivated and why a special talent is her favorite way to relax after a long day of work.

About Lisa Cassis

Lisa Cassis earned a bachelor's degree in pharmacy and a doctoral degree in pharmacology from West Virginia University, followed by postdoctoral positions as an Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow in Pharmacology at Wurzburg, West Germany, and within the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Virginia. Cassis joined the faculty at UK in 1988, and is currently a faculty member within the College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences, Saha Cardiovascular Research Center, the Barnstable Brown Diabetes and Obesity Center and the College of Pharmacy.

Research within the Cassis laboratory has been continuously supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for more than 27 years, contributing to more than 130 scholarly publications. She has mentored many scientists, been the recipient of national and local research awards, and served for 10 years as program director of an NIH Training Grant in Nutritional Sciences. She currently serves as program director for an NIH grant that supports the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) focusing on obesity and cardiovascular diseases.

As vice president for research, Cassis reports directly to the president and oversees research proposal development, grants and contracts administration, federal relations, human subjects protection, 10 non-degree granting and multidisciplinary research centers, and an array of shared-use core facilities that serve UK researchers.

The University of Kentucky is one of only eight universities in the country with the full range of undergraduate, graduate, professional and medical programs on one contiguous campus. That range of programs — world-class poets and writers working minutes away from nationally renowned researchers in cancer and energy — enlivens interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary initiatives in learning and discovery. UK is currently one of only 22 public institutions with a trifecta of federal designations of excellence — for aging, in cancer and in translational science.

This video is part of our “5 Questions” monthly UKNow series where we strive to introduce you to Lisa Cassis, the person.