Grant Awards

2026 Spivack Neuroscience Awards Announced

Jack Spivack established a fund for neuroscience research in 2013 to recognize and support clinical or basic research in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and other neurological disorders. The 2026 Spivack Neuroscience Pilot Award recipients are:

Jan Krzysztof Blusztajn, PhD, professor of pathology & laboratory medicine, and Chad Farris, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology, will aim to understand what causes white matter damage in older adults using a novel MRI technique that matches the sites of white matter abnormalities seen in living patients with tissue samples examined after death for subsequent histological and molecular analyses.

Chandramouli Chandrasekaran, PhD, and Michael Wallace, PhD, both assistant professors of anatomy and neurobiology, will aim to understand how norepinephrine sculpts local circuit dynamics in vivo in a primate during a behavioral task. The project will detail mechanisms by which neuromodulators sculpt cortical circuit function.

Daniel Cifuentes, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry & cell biology, will study a rare childhood brain disorder caused by mutations in the gene AGO2. Using zebrafish, the Cifuentes Lab will examine how these mutations disrupt normal brain development and behavior. By combining gene expression analysis with behavioral testing, they aim to identify drugs that could potentially reverse disease-related changes.

Clint Makino, PhD, professor of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics, will test whether bicarbonate is a risk factor in certain blinding retinal diseases, and whether blocking bicarbonate synthesis might preserve vision by protecting the rods and cones.  

Kara Smith, MD, clinical associate professor of neurology, and Charlene Ong, MD, MPHS, associate professor of neurology, will advance a personalized live music therapy intervention (DyNAMIC) being developed to help hospitalized patients with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias who are at risk for delirium, a serious state of confusion. The research team will track changes in heart rate and pupil size to objectively measure patients’ responses and guide future larger studies