Funded Research Projects
| Catalyst Award
Lead Researcher(s): Jun Ding
This team aims to better understand how Parkinson's disease attacks the brain's basic motor programs and to spawn novel therapies against the disease using gene-editing technology.
| Innovation Award
Lead Researcher(s): Judith Frydman
This team aims to define how and why protein production breaks down in aging cells, leading to disease. This research may lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches against neurodegenerative diseases and potentially aging itself.
| Innovation Award
Lead Researcher(s): Aaron D. Gitler
This project will explore whether amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) result from immune cells attacking altered neurons. The team aims to pioneer the use of engineered immune cells as therapies for neurodegenerative disorders.
NeuroHealth | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Angela Y. Lee
Mental illnesses like bipolar disorder affect millions of people around the world, but early symptoms are often difficult to detect. Working across the disciplines of clinical psychology, communication, and computer science, my research will develop a novel computational tool to identify signals of...
NeuroHealth | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Kwamina Nyame
Phospholipid dysregulation is implicated in the pathogenesis of lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs). We found that glycerophosphodiesters (GPDs) accumulate in lysosomes derived from Batten disease models, a life-limiting LSD whose pathological mechanism remains elusive. GPDs are the degradation...
NeuroHealth | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Xianghao Zhan
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become a global health hazard. If undetected, the brain damage of TBI can accumulate, calling for better TBI modeling and warning systems. TBI modeling involves three stages: head impact kinematics, brain deformation, and injuries. This project will leverage machine...
NeuroHealth | Neuroscience:Translate Award
Lead Researcher(s): Peter L. Santa Maria, MBBS, PhD, Guosong Hong
Sensorineural hearing loss is an increasingly prevalent condition that causes disability to over a third of US adults aged over 65. This team is developing a breakthrough device to restore high-frequency hearing that preserves residual hearing through a reversible and minimally invasive approach.
NeuroHealth | Neuroscience:Translate Award
Lead Researcher(s): Helen Bronte-Stewart, MD, MS, Allison Okamura
This team is developing a device that will enable accurate diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease via telemedicine. They initially introduced the technology of Quantitative DigitoGraphy (QDG) using a repetitive alternating finger tapping (RAFT) task on a musical instrument digital interface (MIDI)...
NeuroHealth | Neuroscience:Translate Award
System uses computer vision algorithms and emotion classifiers integrated into gameplay to detect emotion in the child’s face via the phone’s front camera to determine agreement with the displayed prompt, along with other features such as gaze, eye contact, and joint attention.
NeuroHealth | Neuroscience:Translate Award
This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to develop small-molecule therapeutics with immunomodulatory properties linked to Parkinson’s disease and test their potentially therapeutic effects in cell cultures and animal models of the disease.
