N e w G r a n t s f o r E M B I T r a i n e e s

Dr. Agudelo, the McKnight Neurocognitive Scholar was awarded a Diversity Supplement to his mentor’s (Dr Ramos) NIH R01 grant, Sleep in Neurocognitive Aging and Alzheimers Research (SANAR) The overall goal of the parent grant is to test the hypothesis that early and persistent exposure to obstructive sleep apnea increases cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and ADRD Upon the release of funds, this award will support 75% of Dr Agudelo’s effort toward research for two years and provide funds for travel to conferences He was selected for and attended the 2022 Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health Related Research (PRIDE). Dr. Agudelo was specifically selected to attend the Behavioral Medicine and Sleep Disorders Training Institute of PRIDE, which was a 2-week in person career development workshop hosted by the University of Miami Milller School of Medicine in 2022.

Recipients of the Alzheimer’s Association International Research Grants

Four researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine received Alzheimer’s Association International Research Grants (among them two of our EMBI trainees- Sarah Getz and Michael Kleiman), giving UM the most funded projects of any university in Florida in the organization’s 2022 cycle.

Sarah Getz, PhD, instructor of neuropsychology in the Department of Neurology and Michael Kleiman, PhD, postdoctoral data scientist both mentored by Dr. Galvin, received an Alzheimer’s Association International Research Grant. The International Research Grants program primarily funds early-career scientists working on new ideas in Alzheimer’s research. This effort is part of a comprehensive funding strategy implemented by the Alzheimer’s Association to attract new scientists to the field in an effort to lead future breakthroughs while generating new data and strategies on the disease

Sarah Getz will use her grant funds to research the project Decision Making and Advanced Planning Care in Alzheimer’s Disease She will recruit participants from a pool of 850 adults over 60 with fluid imaging and genetic biomarkers to investigate susceptibility to decision-making problems She plans on using a novel paradigm to measure financial susceptibility and neurocognitive evaluations with the help of her mentor Dr Galvin

Michael Kleiman will use his grant funds for his proposal Mapping Trajectories of Speech Metrics in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease. The project aims to detect amyloid, a marker of Alzheimer’s disease, in patients through speech behavior before irreversible damage is done in the brain. Dr. Kleiman uses measured speech behavior using simple picture description or story recall tasks, spectral analysis of audio files, and sentiment analysis using natural language processing to differentiate between people with high and normal amyloid levels Another target of Dr Kleiman’s, involves searching for relationships between speech metrics and other data obtained from the CCBH This includes medical, lifestyle and nutritional data, among others

Michael Kleiman was also awarded the McKnight Clinical Translational Research Scholarship in Cognitive Aging and Age-Related Memory Loss to study his project Assessing Trajectories of Discrete Measures of Speech Behavior in Age-related Decline. The major goal of this project is to investigate the trajectory of speech degradation due to normal age-related cognitive decline using both connected and unconnected speech tasks and natural language processing machine learning algorithms.

Lilah Besser had three grants funded in 2022.

Early Career Investigator Award - Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for COVID-19 Research (C4R). role: Co-I.

Alzheimer’s Association Research Grant - Neighborhood Segregation and Longitudinal Change in Brain Health Measures. Role: PI.

NIH/NIA R21 - Objectively Measured Neighborhood Greenness in Midlife and Late-life Cognitive and Brain Imaging Outcomes: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Role: PI

Dr. Tolea received a Florida DOH Ed and Ethel Moore AD Consortium Grant Optimizing Rural Community Health through Interdisciplinary Detection and Care (ORCHID).

Dr. Vontell was funded to work on three NIH projects this year:

She is an Investigator (PI: Bhattacharya) on an NIH/NIA R01 titled Neuroregeneration in Alzheimer’s Disease.

She is an Investigator (PI: Scott,) on an NIH grant for the NIH NeuroBioBank and Tissue Repository. This will foster the development of a centralized brain and tissue biorepository to supply neurodegenerative, developmental and psychiatric diseased tissue to academic and industry scientists in order to advance biospecimen science and the economic opportunities emerging in the biomedical and biotechnology sectors

She is an Investigator (PI-Scott) for the NIH BRAIN initiative cell atlas network (BICAN)