FBI Research Scholars Partnership: How Philanthropy Funds the Bold Vision of Our Most Promising Researchers

The program, founded in 2016, has funded 59 awards to date. The 2022 awards support nine projects and seventeen investigators across ten departments and showcase approaches that are not only innovative, but extraordinarily collaborative. Each has strong potential to reveal novel insights into brain and nervous system disorders and to identify new therapeutic models.

The 2022 Scholars represent the following departments: Cardiology; Cell, Developmental and Regenerative Biology; Diagnostic, Molecular and Interventional Radiology; Dermatology; Medicine; Neurology; Neuroscience; Neurosurgery; Oncological Sciences; and Psychiatry.

Scroll below to meet our Scholars and learn about their work!

• Karen Strauss Cook Research Scholar Award

Cameron S. McAlpine, PhD

Sleep mediates monocyte recruitment to the cerebral
vasculature in tauopathy and Alzheimer’s disease

• Ram Sundaram Research Scholar Award

Rebecca M. Brown, MD, PhD, and Nicholas David Gulati, MD, PhD

Diphencyprone immunotherapy in cutaneous neurofibromas associated with NF1

• David Ross Research Scholar Award

Philipp Mews, PhD, and Marine Salery, PhD

Spatial transcriptomics to illuminate neuronal circuit function in memory

• Fascitelli Research Scholar Award

Laura Berner, PhD; Laurel Morris, PhD; and Priti Balchandani, PhD

Using a novel, noninvasive measure of dopamine to test a model of control in bulimia nervosa

• Nash Family Research Scholar Award

Thomas B. Hildebrandt, PsyD, and Weifei Han, MD

Characterizing the vagal nerve influence on food avoidance in anorexia nervosa

• Lipschultz Research Scholar Award

Dolores Hambardzumyan, PhD, MBA, and Hongyan Zou, MD, PhD

Lineage tracing of tumor hypoxia in primary and recurrent GEM (genetically engineered mouse) model of GMB (glioblastoma)

• Jane Martin and Stuart Katz Research Scholar Award

Xiang Xu, PhD, and Trey Hedden, PhD

In-vivo measurement of Aβ in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease by saturation transfer MRI

• Joseph and Nancy DiSabato Research Scholar Award

Lazar Fleysher, PhD, and Priti Balchandani, PhD

Sodium MRI as a novel biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease

• Richard and Susan Friedman Research Scholar Award

Emily Bernstein, PhD, and Joel Blanchard, PhD

Modeling the distinct steps of melanoma brain metastasis in the dish