Pilot Grant Program
We established a pilot grant program to encourage research using FHS-BAP data by early stage investigators (including post-doctoral associates and faculty at the instructor and assistant professor levels) already working within the AD and brain aging field, and by experienced investigators working in other research areas who want to obtain preliminary results for a novel brain aging and AD-related research idea using FHS data.
Every year we solicit proposals from the BU research community focusing on genetic, genomic, biomarker, epidemiological, behavioral, brain imaging, ethical, health systems or other research in AD, AD-related disorders, and brain aging. Proposed research must include a major component involving analysis of existing FHS data.
In 2023, two applicants received funding:
Jinying Chen, Ph.D. Assistant Professor in the Boston University, Department of Medicine, Section of Preventive Medicine & Epidemiology. Her project is entitled, “A New, Construct-based Approach to Improve Interpretability and Generalizability of Machine Learning-based Risk Prediction for Alzheimer’s Disease”.
Habbiburr Rehman, Ph.D. postdoctoral fellow in the Boston University, Department of Medicine, Section of Biomedical Genetics, is supervised by Drs. Qiu and Zhang. His project is entitled, “Identification of significant blood protein markers for the characterization of Alzheimer’s diseasestatus and its progression in FHS”.