2023 Projects

Inspired by cutting-edge technologies at UMD and BBI core facilities, the 2023 seed grant recipients take on such disorders as autism, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, hearing loss, caregiver-child communication, and familial dysautonomia—a rare but fatal neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorder. The investigators on the six interdisciplinary teams hail from 13 departments, centers and institutes across five UMD colleges, representing the diversity of backgrounds and methods that compose UMD’s collaborative neuroscience research environment.

The aging proteome in accelerated Alzheimer's disease progression

  • Kan Cao (CBMG)
  • Peter Nemes (CHEM)

By combining microanalytical high-resolution mass spectrometry with a new cellular model of accelerated Alzheimer’s disease, this project aims to generate novel insights into the mechanisms of Alzheimer’s as well as the discovery of new biomarkers for AD.

Cortical mechanisms underlying auditory dysfunction in autism spectrum disorder

  • Nikolas Francis (BIOL, BBI)
  • Behtash Babadi (ECE, ISR)

This project combines two-photon microscopy, neuroimaging at the BBI-SAMRI, behavioral training, and advanced statistical modeling of neuronal population activity to identify the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying autism spectrum disorder.

Development of an optogenetics-fMRI system to study the mouse brain

  • Luiz Pessoa (PSYC, MNC)
  • Konstantin Cherkas (BBI)

By combining non-invasive neuroimaging at the BBI-SAMRI with advanced computational techniques, this project investigate how fear and anxiety systems are reorganized during development from adolescence to adulthood while also formally establishing optogenetic fMRI capabilities previously unavailable to College Park investigators.

Toward an adaptive view of neural synchrony

  • Rachel Romeo (HDQM)
  • Christopher Metzler (CS)
  • Eliza Thompson (HESP)

This project pushes the limits of functional near-infrared spectroscopy to study the neural mechanisms that support toddlers’ learning as they interact with caregivers in real time among low-SES, majority-BIPOC dyads.

Toward a non-linguistic measure of auditory processing deficits in older and younger monolingual and bilingual adults

  • Jonathan Simon (ECE, BIOL, ISR)
  • Nick Pandža (ARLIS)
  • Samira Anderson (HESP)

This project combines neuroimaging, psychophysiological and behavioral measures to investigates the neural and behavioral underpinnings of auditory stream segregation via an innovative non-linguistic hearing task newly developed at UMD.

Identifying cell type and subcompartment-specific defects in gene regulation underlying multimodal sensory defects

  • Colenso Speer (BIOL)
  • Lisa Taneyhill (ANSC)

Uniting single-cell sequencing at the BBI-AGTC with super-resolution imaging and subcompartment RNA sequencing, this project pinpoints how variations in the ELP1 gene beget familial dysautonomia's devastating symptoms, including progressive visual decline, difficulty swallowing and trouble sensing facial pain and temperature.


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