KU News Release

Graduating senior with focus on health, wellness wins Campanile Award

Brandon Hidaka

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas senior planning a career in medicine will receive the 2009 Campanile Award.

Brandon Hidaka of Overland Park received the $500 award that was established by the Class of 2000 to honor a graduating senior who has displayed outstanding leadership, character and respect for KU. He will receive bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and psychology with the Class of 2009, then begin his studies at the KU School of Medicine. He is the son of Paul and Roxanne Hidaka of Overland Park and is a graduate of Shawnee Mission East High School.

At KU, Hidaka founded two groups focused on health and well-being, including the KU Yoga Club, which offered free sessions weekly at the Burge Union in spring 2007.

Hidaka first practiced yoga in fall 2006 at KU’s Student Recreation Fitness Center and was impressed with how much better he felt after each session. He wanted other students to experience yoga’s benefits. Attendence at the Burge Union sessions quickly swelled from 25 students to 40 students.

“I founded the club in an effort to give KU students, faculty and staff an opportunity to practice, and especially try, yoga for free,” Hidaka said.

He also taught yoga classes at the student recreation center and private sessions for the KU lacrosse team. For more than a year, he volunteered as a yoga instructor at the Douglas County Jail.

Last spring, after working with individuals who have the progressive neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, Hidaka co-founded Students for ALS activism. He first became aware of the disease after volunteering at Extra Hands on ALS in Dallas through KU’s Alternative Breaks program.

“Our goals are to coordinate student volunteers, increase ALS awareness and help raise money for the ALS Association,” Hidaka said, adding that he has formed a close friendship assisting a 50-year-old ALS patient with day-to-day activities.

Hidaka was among academically talented KU students chosen to receive Undergraduate Research Awards to support original, independent research projects. Stephen Ilardi, associate professor of psychology, was his mentor for work involving techniques to treat depression, among them diet and exercise, including yoga.

Ilardi also directed Hidaka’s work for the Kansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence program symposium held in January in Manhattan. His poster topic was “We Were Never Designed for This: The Increasing Prevalence of Depression.”

“Simply put, Brandon Hidaka is the most talented undergraduate scholar I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” Ilardi said. “For the past two years, he has played such an integral role on my clinical research team that he’s essentially functioned at the level of a graduate student. He has helped us pioneer a promising lifestyle-based approach to treating depressive illness and has even spearheaded his own original program of research on the mood-elevating effects of brief bursts of intensive exercise (sprint interval training).

“Similarly, Brandon has served as the lead author with me on a comprehensive review of the causes and consequences of the modern depression epidemic. Not only is he an exceptionally gifted researcher, but Brandon is a wonderful person — thoughtful, generous and compassionate. He will make a superb physician and medical researcher, and I have no doubt he will make a major positive impact on countless lives.”

Hidaka’s other campus activities include serving as a biology peer educator, a class representative to the Biomedical Engineering Society, a tutor at KU’s Supportive Educational Services and Academic Achievement and Access Center and a high school science teacher for the Math and Science Center at KU.

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