Cultivating curiosity
How unconventional thinking leads to advances in science and education
By Jill Pease
Across the College of Public Health and Health Professions, faculty, students and staff are challenging assumptions, taking risks and tapping into their creative sides. From an unexpected scientific collaborator to theater principles applied in the classroom and brain data transformed into art, these innovators are looking beyond the ordinary to address the big challenges in health. Read on for a few of their stories.
Curiosity made this scientist’s cat famous
John Lednicky, Ph.D., with his pet and scientific collaborator, Pepper.
Courtesy of John Lednicky.
Curiosity and cats have converged in a unique way in John Lednicky’s life. Lednicky, Ph.D., a research professor in the Department of Environmental and Global Health, studies viruses and how they spread among humans and animals. For a few years, he’s been trying to learn more about the transmission of mule deerpox, a virus that can be lethal to white-tailed deer.
“To move science forward, you have to have the ability to ask the right questions that lead to discovery,” Lednicky said. “A lot of that comes with out-of-the-box, creative thinking.”
Enter Pepper, one of Lednicky’s two indoor-outdoor cats, both prolific hunters in their Gainesville yard. When Pepper dropped a “gift” of a dead common cotton mouse at Lednicky’s feet, the reaction was not disgust. Suspecting that mice may transmit deerpox, Lednicky took Pepper’s trophy to the lab for testing.
Analysis revealed the mouse actually harbored the first jeilongvirus ever discovered in the U.S. Previously found in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, jeilongvirus comes from a family of viruses that infect mammals, reptiles, birds and fish, and can occasionally cause serious illness in humans. The team’s findings, and Pepper’s role, made headlines around the globe last fall.
And if that wasn’t enough, Lednicky and his team, including lead author Emily DeRuyter, a Ph.D. candidate in One Health, reported in July that an Everglades short-tailed shrew caught by Pepper was found to be infected with a previously unidentified strain of orthoreovirus, which has been associated with rare cases of encephalitis, meningitis and gastroenteritis in children. Pepper was back in the news.
The Lednicky Lab’s findings are proof that we should never look a gift mouse (or shrew) in the mouth.
“This was an opportunistic study,” Lednicky said. “If you come across a dead animal, why not test it instead of just burying it? There is a lot of information that can be gained.”
The art of communication
Doctor of Occupational Therapy students Gabby LeShane and Emma Sorensen participate in a “two-minute rant” medical improv exercise, designed to help students learn adaptability and flexibility in client communication.
Lindsay Gamble
It’s Monday afternoon in Anna Baird-Galloway’s Occupational Therapy Psychosocial Evaluation and Intervention course and the students are ranting. But this isn’t just airing of grievances.
In this exercise, one student goes on a two-minute rant about something that annoys them. Their partner then reframes the complaining into something positive (“You don’t like it when you’re driving and people pull out in front of you? Well, you must be a considerate driver who values other considerate drivers.”)
Baird-Galloway, O.T.D., OTR/L, a clinical assistant professor of occupational therapy, is drawing on the creativity and quick thinking of thespians to help her students prepare for curveballs in their O.T. practice.
With support from a UF Faculty Enhancement Opportunity grant, Baird-Galloway is integrating medical improv, which has been shown to improve patient communication skills of clinicians-in-training, into her courses.
“Medical improv uses improvisational techniques to teach adaptability and flexibility that leads to more successful therapeutic outcomes when you’re working with your clients,” Baird-Galloway said. “In medical improv, you and your clients are improv partners.”
Baird-Galloway brings plenty of performance background to her work. A board-certified music therapist, she sings and plays the piano, drums, violin, flute and banjo. She also had an acting career with several credits to her name, including guest roles in the TV shows “Chicago Fire” and “Shameless,” and experience on the improv stage.
“You learn how to adapt and be flexible, attune to what your improv partner is doing and be supportive in the responses that you give so that both of you are successful,” she said. “That is something I very much see is needed in health care education.”
Other medical improv exercises Baird-Galloway employs include “Yes, but …,” “Yes, and …” in which students debate a topic using statements that start with those words and experience what it’s like to have an idea shut down by the “but” or supported by the “and.” In “Hello, I’m fine,” students convey emotion through tone of voice and body language while their partners identify the emotion.
By the end of this particular class, the students, who are typically reserved, were animated, engaged and able to draw parallels between the medical improv exercises and real-life scenarios with clients.
“Dr. Baird-Galloway’s exercises helped put me into the shoes of a patient and a clinician,” said second-year Doctor of Occupational Therapy student Paige Zolecki. “The conversations we had were meaningful and beneficial to our learning, and I felt like I was making progress with my communication skills as a future clinician.”
Beauty and the brain
The process for creating a brain illustration like this begins with raw MRI data. Computer software helps Jared Tanner, Ph.D., “develop” the image, akin to using a darkroom to develop camera film pre-digital photography. Next, Tanner applies his artistry to elements such as color to represent particular white matter pathways, adjusting for brightness and intensity, and deciding whether to highlight large parts of the brain, or selected areas, such as this illustration of the thalamus motor system.
As an undergraduate at Brigham Young University, Jared Tanner was searching for a new major. Tanner, who has a natural curiosity for wanting to know how things work, had initially selected engineering, but it hadn’t been the right fit. Things became crystal clear, however, during a psychology class in Tanner’s sophomore year.
The instructor showed students images created with MRI data to reconstruct white matter pathways using diffusion fiber tracking, a new way to look inside the living human brain.
“I was fascinated by the mixture of colors and the graceful, organic flowing of the white matter tracts,” Tanner said. “The colors were sometimes used to represent a particular brain pathway and other times, were colored to indicate the primary direction the brain pathways were traveling. I told myself, ‘I want to make beautiful images like that.’ That very quickly set me on a path to my current career.”
After completing undergraduate and master’s degrees in psychology, Tanner came to the College of Public Health and Health Professions to pursue a doctorate in clinical and health psychology and join the lab of neuropsychology professor Catherine Price, Ph.D. Taking advantage of the advanced imaging techniques developed by College of Medicine professor Thomas Mareci, Ph.D., Tanner began creating his own brain illustrations as a way to combine his interests in science and art.
“This is a way for me to beautifully communicate neuroscience through the broadly accessible medium of art,” Tanner said. “The biology of the brain is beautiful. The brain is also what helps us create and experience beauty.”
The illustrations are more than pretty pictures. These anatomically correct images shed light on the connections within the brain and why they matter.
Now a research associate professor in the college’s Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Tanner studies “brain age,” and how changes to lifestyle and environment can offset wear and tear on the brain that may stem from factors such as chronic pain. He still shares his illustrations to inspire more people to see the brain’s beauty.
“If these images spoke to me, they might be something other people would enjoy,” Tanner said. “They might also, like they did for me, encourage students to pursue a career in the neurosciences or invite anyone to learn more about the brain.”
A formula for bright ideas
Jerne Shapiro, M.P.H., says data, logic and a little bit of “Spidey Sense” all play into her strategy for keeping infectious disease contagion rates low.
Chloe Hyde
The best ideas come when three components are in place, says Jerne Shapiro, M.P.H., an instructional assistant professor of epidemiology. Two are almost no-brainers: a good base of background knowledge and a problem that needs solving. The third is more elusive, but just as important: a quiet, uninterrupted space to think.
“When I say a quiet space I mean, my kids aren’t talking to me, my family doesn’t need me, I’m not thinking about something at work or an interpersonal issue,” Shapiro said. “In that quiet, the world becomes clear and salient. And when you really have a creative moment it’s an indescribable feeling.”
In March 2020, Shapiro had such a moment. Classes and other campus activities had moved online at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Early one morning, Shapiro was enjoying a cup of tea and watching the birds at the feeder before the rest of her family got up.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘How are we going to open this university back up so people can continue their education and research?’ My next thought was, ‘Who is going to do this?’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, crap! I think I have to do this,’” she said, laughing.
Shapiro grabbed a piece of junk mail on the kitchen counter. On the back of the envelope, she wrote a six-step plan to reopen the university. While Shapiro, a former Alachua County epidemiologist, had been doing COVID-related work for the university, no one had yet been tasked with planning the reopen. She shared the list with Michael Lauzardo, M.D., director of UF’s COVID-19 response. From there, her role evolved into serving as the lead epidemiologist for the university’s Screen, Test & Protect program, where she built and implemented the robust surveillance system needed to safely bring everyone back to campus.
UF recognized her three years of service with numerous honors, including the Champions for Change Award, the Faculty Superior Accomplishment Award and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation’s National Humanism in Medicine Medal.
In the classroom, Shapiro, the 2025 M.P.H. Exemplary Faculty Award winner, helps her students find a space free of distractions so they can generate big ideas. Phones, laptops and preconceived notions are off limits.
“Public health practitioners need to always be inquisitive about assumptions that we’ve previously made, and what is new on the horizon that needs to be addressed,” she said. “The world is not stagnant, and we need to be fully engaged in the process of always learning and always wondering.”
Breaking the scientific mold
Ashley Malin, Ph.D., has been invited to present her research at community meetings across the nation and state, including this Miami-Dade County Commission meeting in March.
courtesy of Miami-Dade County
About two-thirds of American households receive fluoridated water in their taps, a practice that started in the 1940s. Like many people, Ashley Malin, Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology, assumed the science on fluoride’s safety was settled. Then, something a family member said made her curious.
As Malin held a bottled water, the family member cautioned her: “Don’t drink that. Fluoride lowers IQ.”
“I couldn’t believe the government would add something to drinking water that could be harmful for our brains,” Malin said. “So, I started looking into it to try to prove this person wrong.”
That response is typical for Malin, who says that instead of digging in when she hears something that challenges her worldview, she seeks out more information. In her review of the literature, Malin, then an undergraduate student, was surprised to read fluoride studies conducted in China and an animal study in the U.S. that found evidence fluoride may impact IQ and behavior. She ultimately vowed to someday be the first to conduct a study to examine fluoride in Canadian or U.S. residents.
Last year, Malin published such a study. The results demonstrated higher fluoride levels in pregnant women are linked to increased odds of their children exhibiting neurobehavioral problems at age 3. Her groundbreaking work was recognized by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences as a 2024 Paper of the Year. She has been invited by cities across the U.S. to present her research and findings from other recent national reports as part of community conversations about water fluoridation. In July, Florida ended the practice statewide with the passage of the Florida Farm Bill.
“Curiosity has led me to discover what some might consider more obscure areas of research, but that have ultimately, I think, been important for public health,” said Malin, who is currently studying the systemic impacts of nutrition on tooth decay.
Malin’s experience has influenced her advice to students: Keep an open mind and be willing to follow your own unique path.
“In higher education, oftentimes the expectation is people will fit a certain mold, or follow the same path as others,” she said, “but then I don’t think we make as much of a contribution to society and to research in general by doing that. As scientists, if we’re just going to follow what everyone else has done, what are we even here for?”
Telling public health’s story
Brittney Dixon-Daniel, Ph.D., left, gave her students, including Alexa Rivers, right, a public health storytelling assignment to help them learn how to communicate to general audiences. “Through her guidance, we were challenged to grow, not just as storytellers, but as communicators and listeners,” Rivers said.
Lindsay Gamble
Think of a public health issue that has impacted you personally. Write a first-person account of the experience and include elements of great storytelling, including plot, characters and setting. Educate your audience about the importance of this issue and close with a call to action.
This was Brittney Dixon-Daniel’s charge to students in her undergraduate public health messaging and dissemination class. The assignment was designed to teach students to use a personal story to educate general audiences about public health. The students surprised Dixon-Daniel, Ph.D., M.P.H., director of the Bachelor of Public Health program, with their creativity, honesty and talent.
“I wanted to encourage them to think creatively, especially ways to present information to audiences at different levels,” said Dixon-Daniel, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Research, Management and Policy. “It turned out to be a great way for them to see the talent they have, because I think a lot of them didn’t realize how good they are at storytelling.”
Their essays discussed very personal experiences, such as surviving childhood cancer, coping with a friend’s suicide or helping a parent navigate mental health treatment.
“Students are balancing a lot of things outside of the classroom, and they still show up and put their best foot forward,” Dixon-Daniel said. “Had I not done this assignment, I don’t think I would have known the half of what many of them are experiencing. I learned a lot more about them, which also helps with understanding their personalities in the classroom.”
Several of the essays were published in the college’s online newsroom and social media accounts as “My Public Health Story.” Alexa Rivers, whose essay described living with Type 1 diabetes, saw immediate response to her essay’s publication.
“When my parents shared my writing on Facebook, friends and relatives reached out with their own stories,” she said. “A few even mentioned they are encouraging family members to get tested for diabetes because of what I wrote. That experience showed me how even a simple story can spark early diagnoses and create meaningful and lasting health impacts.”
Fostering creativity through experiences like writing this essay has been a way of finding light in her darkest moments, Rivers said.
“Without embracing my creative side, I might never have discovered my passion for public health and diabetes advocacy. I believe it is essential that we nurture both curiosity and creativity to build a brighter, more compassionate future in health care,” she said.