2021-2022 Cohort of Bruce McEwen Career Development Fellows Selected
The NIA supported Animal Models Research Network under the leadership of Jenny Tung, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University, Alessandro Bartolomucci, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology and Physiology at University of Minnesota, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UNC, has recently selected its 2021-2022 cohort of Bruce McEwen Career Development Fellows. These awards support outstanding junior scientists with high potential to advance the use of animal models or comparative approaches to understand the social determinants of health and aging.
Selected fellows include: Sarah Wolf, Predoctoral Student, Indiana University will be using a long-term dataset on tree swallows to investigate how social aggression influences telomere length and vice versa to assess how variation and plasticity in social behavior may promote or prevent aging. Sarah Carp, Postdoctoral Associate, UC Davis, will be using a nonhuman primate model of early neuropathology related to Alzheimer’s disease in order to examine the social consequences of amyloid beta oligomers as well as potential protective effects of social interaction on induced neuropathological changes.
The Animal Models Network has also awarded smaller Travel Awards to support the work of three additional early stage investigators: Raisa Hernandez Pacheco, Assistant Professor, Cal State Long Beach, focuses on developing continuously structured population models to describe and quantify the prevalence of stability, deterioration, and recovery from disabilities among socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups of Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques. Emily Rothwell, Postdoctoral Researcher, UMass Amherst will study neuropsychiatric symptoms in marmoset monkeys to understand age-related changes in affective processes that underlie psychological functioning in both healthy aging and dementia. Quinn Webber, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Colorado will study territorial behavior in North American red squirrels to examine the
Please see the Center for Population Health and Aging (CPHA) website for more information on the Animal Model Network and Biodemography research portfolio.