Craig Myrum, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral IRTA fellow at NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) in the Neurocognitive Aging Section (NAS) of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience (LBN). His work focuses on how a key memory-related gene, Arc, is disrupted in a well-established rat model of cognitive aging. Craig is a member of FelCom and is the current Outreach Officer, aiming to disseminate the activities of NIH fellows. Outside of the lab, he enjoys marathon running, traveling, and most things that get him outdoors.
What if we could diagnose risk for Alzheimer’s before symptoms appeared? To address the challenge, in the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the IRP, Dr. Maja Mustapic searches for Alzheimer’s biomarkers using liquid biopsies.
“The goal of my project is to study these earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease by constructing a timeline of changes in brain imaging and cognitive measures related to Alzheimer’s in a group of cognitively normal individuals,” postdoc Murat Bilgel explains.
Given that Alzheimer’s is such a complex disease with many causes and pathways, it is not surprising that the search for effective treatments has proven difficult. So I spoke with Drs. Yujun Hou and Hyundong Song, postdoctoral fellows in the IRP’s Laboratory of Molecular Gerontology at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to learn more about their approaches to meeting the challenge.
Inspired by September’s World Alzheimer's Awareness Month and driven by my interest in cognitive aging and dementia, I'm asking my fellow IRP postdoctoral researchers about which approaches they believe hold promise for advancing our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease.
When NIH postdocs aren’t looking through a microscope, pipetting, and perfusing in the lab, or writing and revising their latest manuscript, many volunteer their time to service in their communities. In fact, one of the eight NIH Fellows Committee (FelCom) subcommittees is devoted to just this.
Speaking at the NIH Research Festival in September, Michael Gottesman, M.D., the NIH Deputy Director for Intramural Research said, “The real research is being done by the fellows, by the students.” The FARE awards are meant to commend those researchers doing outstanding work at the NIH.
This page was last updated on Thursday, January 20, 2022
