Previous Awardees

Name: Michelle Chen

School: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Department: Neurology

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Assistant Professor

Project Title: It's not where you are but how you get there: predicting neuropsychological process scores using digital voice recordings.

Project Description: The proposed project will explore automatic detection of different types of errors committed during neuropsychological assessment, which may better elucidate underlying cognitive processes compared to crude neuropsychological summary scores and more sensitive to early stages of cognitive decline, through machine-enabled analyses of digital voice recordings. We will leverage the rich longitudinal data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), which contains voice recordings of thousands of individuals whose cognitive functioning has been monitored for decades.

Name: Santiago Cuesta

School: School of Arts and Science

Department: Cell Biology and Neuroscience

Unit: New Brunswick

Primary Appointment Title: Assistant Professor

Project Title: Impact of the Adolescent Gut Microbiome on Brain Maturation

Project Description: Adolescents are more likely to experience mental health disorders than individuals in any other age group. Regardless, the etiology of this heightened risk remains mostly unknown. Lately, the type of bacteria that inhabit the gut –the gut microbiota– have been linked to different adult brain function and behaviors. However, it remains unclear whether alterations in the microbiota trajectory during adolescence can affect ongoing brain maturational processes, potentially altering risk of disease. Here we will apply a novel multidisciplinary approach directed to characterize clear and mechanistically defined interactions between the gut microbiota and the developing brain among males and females that can help to develop systemic strategies aimed at reducing adolescent risk of psychopathology.

Name: Lisa Denzin

School: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School- Rutgers Cancer Institute of NJ

Department: Pediatrics

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Associate Professor

Project Title: An unexpected role for bone morphogenic protein 2 (BMPR2) in the MHC class II antigen processing and presentation pathway

Project Description: Pathogen derived peptides are displayed at the surface of DCs to alert the immune system that an infection has occurred. Our results determined that a completely new and unexpected biological signaling pathway maybe controlling this essential step that leads to protective immune responses. This signaling pathway, while known to have many other essential functions in biology, has never been linked to controlling MHCII peptide loading. Our studies are of high significance since the proper control of peptide presentation has profound implications for improved vaccines, immune response to cancer and protection against autoimmune disease.

Name: Stella Elkabes

School: Rutgers NJ Medical School

Department: Neurosurgery

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Professor

Project Title: Repeated concussions as risk factors for multiple sclerosis (MS) and MS-associated comorbidities: mechanisms in a new animal model

Project Description: Repeated concussions (repeated mild traumatic brain injury, rmTBI) during adolescence have been linked to increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) in adulthood. It is not known how repeated concussions affect MS onset and disease course and MS-associated comorbidities including cognitive and mood deficits and epilepsy. The pathological mechanisms triggered by repeated concussions which increase the vulnerability to MS have not been elucidated.  The overall goals of our studies are to establish and validate a new animal model that recapitulates MS in adults who sustained repeated concussions during adolescence, investigate the association between rmTBI and the pathogenesis or progression of MS-like disease and comorbidities, and elucidate the underlying mechanisms. It is anticipated that our studies will pave the way for future comprehensive investigations to identify therapeutic targets and test novel therapies that alleviate the impact of repeated concussions on the development of MS and comorbid conditions.

Name: Jinglin Fu

School: Faculty of Arts and Science

Department: Chemistry

Unit: Camden

Primary Appointment Title: Associate Professor

Project Title: Enhancement of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Genome Editing with Targeted DNA Nanoparticles Delivery

Project Description: Genome editing of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) is a rapidly advancing field with the potential to revolutionize the treatment of genetic blood disorders and related diseases. However, the effective implementation is hampered by challenges in the lack of efficient delivery of the CRISPR/Cas genome editing system to HSCs. Here, our goal is to use self-assembled DNA nanoparticles to deliver therapeutic RNA and crisper case proteins into stem cells for guiding genome editing. Nucleic acids-based nanoparticles represent a novel gene delivery tool for HSCs that provides advantages over conventional methods, such as improved targeting specificity, reduced off-target effects, and minimized potential toxicity. The proposed research will potentially improve therapeutic outcomes and benefit individuals and families affected by genetic disorders.

Name: Andrey Grigoriev

School: Faculty of Arts and Science

Department: Biology

Unit: Camden

Primary Appointment Title: Professor

Project Title: Computational analysis of recombination in SARS-CoV-2: novel mechanisms in virology and pandemic preparedness

Project Description: Dr. Grigoriev’s laboratory of Computational Genomics at Rutgers-Camden works on detecting and interpreting genome variants, from interspecies comparison to tumorigenesis to SARS-CoV-2. This project will focus on the analysis of the latter, on the novel and unexpected transcriptome rearrangements detected there, in order to put them into context of variants of concern and potential link with syncytia formation and disease severity. This work will also address related aspects of virus evolution and implications for future pandemic preparedness.

Name: Hilary Grosso Jasutkar

School: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Department: Neurology

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Instructor of Neurology

Project Title: The Role of Synaptic Autophagy in Alzheimer's Disease

Project Description: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a degenerative condition of the brain characterized by a progressive decline in cognitive function. It has long been known that the homeostatic pathway, autophagy, which is important for synapse homeostasis, becomes disrupted in the course of AD. However, it remains unclear whether this is a proximal event in AD, or how AD-associated pathological changes interfere with autophagic maintenance of the synapse. This proposal aims to use an AD mouse model to determine when during AD pathogenesis autophagy becomes affected. We will also utilize primary cell cultures from this AD model to determine which step in the autophagic processing of synaptic proteins is disrupted by AD-associated pathogenic changes. Better understanding how AD disrupts autophagy may help to identify targets for disease modifying therapies for this devastating disease.

Name: Matthew Moschitto

School: Pharmacy

Department: Medicinal Chemistry

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Assistant Professor

Project Title: An inward-out sulfonyl fluoride hub approach to the development of covalent inhibitors

Project Description: This project seeks to employ an inward out sulfonyl fluoride hub approach to discover inhibitors of two promising anticancer targets, serine hydro methyltransferase and heat shock factor 1. This approach involves the screening of a small library of diverse sulfonyl fluorides to find a hit molecule with weak to moderate activity. Then, by using computer modelling and mass spectrometry as a guide, elaborate the molecule outwards to achieve increased behind, stability, and selectivity towards the target. Sulfonyl fluorides are one type of covalent inhibitor that can bind effectively in shallow binding sites and react with lysine and tyrosine residues, thus expanding the scope of druggable targets.

Name: Philip Parker

School: School of Arts and Science

Department: Psychology

Unit: New Brunswick

Primary Appointment Title: Assistant Professor

Project Title: Neural circuitry of ethological sensorimotor integration

Project Description: Many everyday behaviors depend heavily on vision, yet our understanding of how the brain processes visual information is predominantly based on experiments that restrict natural behaviors. This project seeks to bridge this gap by investigating the neural circuits and computational processes involved in a specific natural visual behavior in mice: judging distances to objects in their environment. Through these experiments, we aim to uncover the brain's ability to interpret sensory input in dynamic, real-world conditions, shedding light on the intricate workings of the visual brain in its natural context. This work will improve our understanding of the basic biology underlying sensorimotor behavior and provide a framework for studying sensory processing deficits associated with neurological disorders.

Name: Daniel Pilch

School: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Department: Pharmacology

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Professor

Project Title: Development of New Antibiotics Against Important Gram-Negative Bacterial Pathogens

Project Description: Antibiotic resistance is an increasingly serious threat to global public health that requires the continual development of new antibacterial agents.  Toward this goal, the proposed project is aimed at developing new antibiotics that can be used to treat infections caused by Gram-negative bacterial pathogens of acute clinical significance.  The agents targeted for development inhibit the essential cell division protein FtsZ, a novel antibacterial target unexploited by any antibiotics in current clinical use.  These next-generation agents are also designed to utilize endogenous bacterial systems for iron uptake, thereby enhancing drug uptake across the membrane barriers of the target pathogens.  The compounds developed through this project will enable us to take an important step toward addressing the urgent need for new drugs to treat resistant bacterial infections that will be effective even when current standard-of-care drugs fail.

Name: Mark Rossi           

School: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School- Rutgers Cancer Institute of NJ

Department: Psychiatry

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Assistant Professor

Project Title: A pontine-hypothalamic pathway for acquiring aversive behavioral states.

Project Description: Neuropsychiatric illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mood disorders, and eating disorders impair quality of life and health outcomes for a significant proportion of the population. Unfortunately, these conditions remain difficult to treat, and available therapeutics have limited efficacy. Maladaptive changes in the neurocircuitry controlling reward and aversion are thought to underlie the development of many psychiatric disorders; however, the ways in which the brain processes positive and negative stimuli and how they become dysfunctional, promoting pathological behavior remain largely unclear. This project will test the hypothesis that neural projections from the pons to the hypothalamus encode reward and aversion and are reprogrammed by aberrant activity.

Name: Loren W. Runnels

School: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Department: Pharmacology

Unit: Rutgers Health

Primary Appointment Title: Professor

Project Title: Function of CNNM2 in HSMR Syndrome

Project Description: Human mutations in the CNNM2 gene give rise to the genetic syndrome Hypomagnesemia, Seizures, and Intellectual Disability (HSMR) syndrome (OMIM 616418). Patients affected with HSMR excrete more Mg2+ from the kidney into the urine, causing Mg2+ deficiency. More seriously affected HSMR patients have neurological symptoms, including seizures, motor skills difficulties, intellectual disability, and defects in speech. We hypothesize that disruption of CNNM2 function in the brain is responsible for the central nervous system defects observed in HSMR syndrome. In this project, we will characterize the expression of CNNM2 in mouse embryos and brain, create stem cell lines lacking CNNM2 or that express CNNM2 with HSMR disease-causing mutations, and then use the mutant cell lines to investigate how disruption of CNNM2 affects the function of neural precursor cells (NPC) and induced neurons (iNs) generated from the derived stem cell lines.

Name: Harini Sampath

School: School of Environmental and Biological Sciences

Department: Nutritional Sciences

Unit: New Brunswick

Primary Appointment Title: Associate Professor

Project Title: A novel role for stearoyl-CoA desaturases in modulating colonic inflammation and risk for colorectal cancers.

Project Description: The protein stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) converts saturated fatty acids to monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) and plays a key role in metabolic diseases like fatty liver disease and diabetes. We have discovered that SCD expression in the intestine modulates risk for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and potentially for colorectal cancers (CRCs). This project will delineate the mechanisms underlying this increased risk and test for a role for intestinal SCD and dietary MUFAs in protecting against both IBD and CRCs.

Name: Elizabeth Tricomi

School: School of Arts and Science

Department: Psychology

Unit: Newark

Primary Appointment Title: Associate Professor

Project Title: The role of math anxiety in processing feedback about math performance

Project Description: Math anxiety can prevent students from developing key math skills, which can lead to poor health-related decision making and weak financial and physical health. To remedy this problem, research is needed on how math anxiety can alter learning processes. We propose to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how math anxiety influences the neural processing of feedback about one’s performance in math. We posit that math-anxious students may recruit the brain’s reward system differently when processing feedback about math performance than when processing feedback about performance in other domains, such as memory. This work will provide insight into the neural mechanisms that shape the trajectory of learning, which may ultimately lead to more evidence-based intervention strategies.