Now in its 15th year, the FUTURE in Biomedicine program fosters research and learning partnerships with professors from Iowa colleges that do not offer doctoral programs. Two of this summer’s researchers—Nandakumar Narayanan, MD, PhD, from the University of Iowa, and Terence Moriarty, PhD, of the University of Northern Iowa—discuss their experience collaborating through the program.

University of Iowa graduate student Brooke Yeager has won the 2023 Kwak-Ferguson Fellowship, a $10,000 award from the Iowa Neuroscience Institute for an upper level graduate student working in the area of neurodegenerative diseases.

A few minutes of data recorded from a single electrode placed on top of the head may be sufficient to predict thinking problems, including dementia, in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). The finding from a new University of Iowa study might help improve diagnosis of cognitive disability in PD and develop new biomarkers and targeted therapies for cognitive symptoms of the disease.

The Iowa Neuroscience Institute has awarded two grants to support early-career faculty members pursuing research in fundamental brain mechanisms. Stephanie Gantz, PhD, assistant professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, and Joel Geerling, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology, will each receive $300,000 over two years to support their research.

Two University of Iowa faculty members have been awarded Williams-Cannon Faculty Fellowships through the Iowa Neuroscience Institute. Marie Gaine, PhD, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences and experimental therapeutics, and Qiang (Johnson) Zhang, PhD, clinical assistant professor of neurology, will each receive $47,500 in research funding.

By building on nearly 30 years of groundbreaking research about the human brain, Iowa’s Human Brain Research Lab incorporates new and innovative techniques to study brain physiology. The lab's discoveries are paving new avenues to how researchers study brain structure and function.

UI stroke researchers led by Enrique Leira, MD, professor of neurology, and neurosurgery, and Anil Chauhan, PhD, professor of internal medicine, contributed the winning therapy in the rigorous pre-clinical Stroke Preclinical Assessment Network (SPAN) trial for testing cerebroprotective stroke treatments.

Twice exceptional youth—children who have a diagnosis of autism and who also have exceptional cognitive ability—are at increased the risk of suicidal thoughts, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Iowa. Led by Jacob Michaelson and Lucas Casten, the study is the largest genetically informed study to date of risk factors for suicidal thoughts in autistic youth, and the first to examine the relationship between autism, exceptional cognitive ability, suicidal thoughts, and genetics across multiple large samples of children.