ADRC Affiliated Researchers

Research is directed at biological actions of neuronal growth factors and signaling mechanisms downstream of receptor tyrosine kinases.

Adult neurogenesis function and regulation

The overarching goal of my research is to understand the bidirectional communication between the central nervous system and the immune system in regulation of cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Currently we are focused on using SARS-CoV-2 infection in a mouse model to investigate the long-term consequences of COVID-19 on inflammation, cognition, and neuropsychiatric symptoms and the possibility of increased risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and/or Alzheimer’s disease.

My research expertise includes modeling and forecasting for biomedical demography and health/LTC actuarial practice.

Background in diffusion tensor imaging, anatomical structure and tissue segmentation, structural brain morphometry, modeling, deformable registration, atlas building.

My current interests in research include: 1. Improved anesthesia for liver intervention. 2. Thrombectomy device for dialysis fistulae and veins. 3. Improving diagnostic yield for difficult biliary duct biopsies. 4. Improving methods of small bowel and colonic arterial embolization. 5. Percutaneous intervention for pancreatic duct. 6. Prolonging the patency of transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunts. 7. Prolonging the patency of biliary stents.

The primary focus of my lab is to investigate the relationship between APOE genotype and late onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Areas of interest include the role of the microbiota (the trillions of bacteria living in and on our bodies), nutrition, and exercise in modulating HCT outcomes such as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and infections.

My major research interest is in examining the effectiveness of services for severely mentally ill individuals, including factors that improve or impede good outcomes. Current research includes: the effectiveness of involuntary outpatient commitment, psychiatric advance directives, criminal justice outcomes for persons with mental illnesses, violence and mental illness and antipsychotic medications.

The Neuroinflammation and Cognitive Outcomes Laboratory is committed to define the mechanisms underlying memory deficits after anesthesia and surgery especially in vulnerable models (neurodegeneration and aging) with an overarching goal of identify safe strategies to resolve neuroinflammation for postoperative delirium.

Somatosensory Cortical Dynamics, and Neurocomputation in Living Neural Networks

Works in the fields of computational chemistry, cheminformatics and structural bioinformatics who works to develop new methodologies and software tools for computer-assisted drug design.

Clinical trials in Parkinson disease, Alzheimer disease, translational research in Parkinson disease, tremor, stroke, and preclinical studies on Alzheimer’s disease models, stroke, metabolism, and cerebral blood flow.

Dr. Van Houtven’s aging and economics research interests encompass long-term care financing, intra-household decision-making, informal care, and home- and community-based services. She examines how family caregiving affects health care utilization, expenditures, health and work outcomes of care recipients and caregivers. She is also interested in understanding how best to support family caregivers to optimize caregiver and care recipient outcomes.

Focuses on the investigation of proinflammatory neuroimmune and epigenetic mechanisms in animal models of developmental neurobiology and neurodegeneration, including (1) alcohol pharmacology, (2) adolescent neurodevelopment, (3) cholinergic system and neurocircuitry, and (4) Alzheimer’s disease

Neurodegeneration, Alzheimer’s, Transgenic, Animal Models, Amyloid, Apolipoprotein-E, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry

The interplay of sleep and neurodegenerative disorders.