Randolph-Macon College Psychology & Behavioral Neuroscience Professor Massimo Bardi was an invited speaker at the Science of Enrichment Symposium, which took place June 12, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Co-hosted by the Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine Animal Enrichment Committee and the Michigan Society for Medical Research, the Symposium is designed to engage laboratory animal staff and research investigators in the science of environmental enrichment for animals used in biomedical research.

Bardi’s talk, Immunomodulatory Effects of Stress and Environmental Enrichment in Long-Evans Rats, focused on the protective role of environmental enrichment on the immune function of laboratory animals. This work was done in collaboration with Sammi Scarola ’18, who is now a student at Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Scarola, who majored in behavioral neuroscience and chemistry at RMC, was the first undergraduate student to win first prize for the best poster presentation at the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society in back-to-back years: in 2017, when she presented her work in Japan, and in 2018, when she presented her research in Boca Raton, Florida.

Massimo Bardi
Bardi, who earned his B.A. and M.S. from University of Pisa and his Ph.D. from University of Cagliari, joined the Randolph-Macon College faculty in 2013.

He serves as director of the Behavioral Neuroscience program and laboratory at RMC, and director of the college’s DuMond Conservancy in Miami, Florida, where he and his students study primate behavior.

Bardi teaches a variety of psychology and behavioral neuroscience courses, including Comparative Animal Behavior, Primatology, Behavioral Neuroscience, and The Psychobiology of Happiness. He also participates in RMC’s Schapiro Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, which offers students the opportunity to conduct 10 weeks of summer research under the guidance of a faculty member.