Great Plains IDeA-CTR announces scholar grant recipients

Deepta Ghate, M.D., from the UNMC Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, is one of the scholar grant awardees.

Links to photos of four scholars awarded grants:

https://www.unmc.edu/media/publicaffairs/press/Soonjo-Hwang.jpg

https://www.unmc.edu/media/publicaffairs/press/GhateDeepta.jpeg

https://www.unmc.edu/media/publicaffairs/press/Daniel-Rasetshwane.jpeg

https://www.unmc.edu/media/publicaffairs/press/Anthony-Podany.jpg

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The Great Plains IDeA-Clinical Translational Research (CTR) Network at the University of Nebraska Medical Center has announced four awardees for its 2017 Scholars Program grants.

The goal of the program, administered through a National Institutes of Health/National Institute of General Medical Sciences grant, is to develop early career researchers into independent scientists and increase the infrastructure and other resources needed to support clinical/translational research (CTR) around the region.

To help achieve this goal, selected scholars are provided with the protected time and seed grant funding to develop competitive CTR projects for submission to the NIH. The award provides partial salary support and up to $50,000 annually to support preliminary research efforts for up to four years.

The Great Plains IDeA-CTR Network is a collaborative effort between nine institutions in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kansas to reach medically underserved populations and transform health delivery and outcomes in the Great Plains region.

The five-year, $20 million grant is the largest grant ever for UNMC. Matthew Rizzo, M.D., professor and chair of the UNMC Department of Neurological Sciences, is the principal investigator on the grant.

In addition to UNMC, the Nebraska institutions include the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nebraska at Kearney and Boys Town National Research Hospital. Other participants include the University of South Dakota, University of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, and the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Three of the scholars awarded grants were from UNMC and the fourth awardee was from Boys Town National Research Hospital.

The scholars and their research projects include:

Deepta Ghate, M.D., assistant professor, department of ophthalmology & visual sciences, UNMC.

Patients with glaucoma have a three times higher risk of accidents as compared to the normal population. Dr. Ghate's long-term goal is to develop alert systems when objects appear in the areas of missing vision, so as to make driving safer for patients with glaucoma. Her proposed study will use a new and innovative visual field task, built in a driving simulator, to precisely map the parts of visual scene that glaucoma patients can and cannot see during distracted and non-distracted driving, and then compare it to the visual field mapped in clinic.

Soonjo Hwang, M.D., assistant professor, department of psychiatry, UNMC.

Dr. Hwang's project will determine the impact of oxytocin on children and adolescents with severe levels of irritability/emotional dysregulation/and aggressive behavior.

Anthony Podany, Pharm.D., assistant professor, College of Pharmacy, UNMC.

Dr. Podany's research addresses the critical need for shorter course tuberculosis (TB) treatment regimens for HIV/TB co-infected individuals.

Daniel Rasetshwane, Ph.D., director, Auditory Signal Processing Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital.

Dr. Rasetshwane's project is to improve the quality of hearing aids and, thereby, patient satisfaction by having developed a fitting algorithm that utilizes categorical loudness scaling data and a signal-processing algorithm that restores suppression. Evaluation of both algorithms resulted in promising outcomes.

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