10/21/2009 Charlie Johnson, ECE ILLINOIS
ECE PhD candidate Anh Van was recently selected to participate in the prestigious fourth annual National Graduate Student Research Festival sponsored by the National Institute of Health (NIH).
Written by Charlie Johnson, ECE ILLINOIS
ECE PhD candidate Anh Van was recently selected to participate in the prestigious fourth annual National Graduate Student Research Festival sponsored by the National Institute of Health (NIH). The festival, held in Bethesda, Maryland, on November 12 and 13, is designed by the NIH as an opportunity for PhD candidates to present their research to NIH researchers and to explore opportunities for post-doctoral research with the nation’s premier biomedical research agency.
“I’m excited. It’s a great chance to interact with the professional community, and it’s a fantastic job opportunity,” said Van. Van was one of only 200 PhD candidates selected from a field of applicants to participate in the 2009 festival. In 2008, 819 applications for participation were received.
In order to be selected for the festival, students had to have graduated or plan to graduate between June 2009 and October 2010. Applicants were required to submit an abstract detailing the applicant’s area of research, curriculum vitae, a cover letter, and a letter of recommendation from the applicant’s dissertation adviser, in this case, Bioengineering Assistant Professor Brad Sutton.
“The festival is a great opportunity for the NIH to get an idea of what people are working on and to meet PhD graduates before they start looking for post-docs to see if there is a mutual interest they can pursue,” said Sutton. “I have been very pleased with Anh’s progress in my lab. It’s a great opportunity for her.”
The research that Van will take to the festival is on the development of high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging. This type of imaging allows neurologists with the use of an MRI machine to non-invasively study the integrity of nerves in the human brain. Degenerative nerve diseases degrade these nerve bundles, which is what causes loss of memory and other brain functions in those suffering from degenerative neurological diseases. Van is working on increasing the resolution of this imaging technique to allow researchers and doctors to be able to study small nerve bundles, like the ones responsible for Alzheimer’s disease, in detail.
Current imaging technology using diffusion weighted imaging tracks the random movement of water in the brain in order to form images of nerve bundles. As the nerves begin to degrade, the movement of water inside the bundles changes. For instance, if membranes are still present on specific nerves, water is forced to move along these membranes. But, if the membrane is degraded, the water can be tracked moving through and around the degrading nerve fibers. Van’s research is attempting to focus this imaging technique into a small special scale to allow researchers to see individual pathways in specific parts of the brain that some feel may be responsible for the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms.
“When Anh’s method is up and running fully, we’d like to be able to interrogate specific pathways, like ones involved in memory formation in the hippocampus, and we hope to be able to see structural changes that will predict the functional changes in those with neurological diseases,” said Sutton.
What makes Van’s research even more intriguing is that the entire study has been carried out on volunteer human subjects, meaning that when the technique is properly perfected, it should be very easy to parlay into a real-world clinical setting.
“I think once the method is developed, which I expect it to be by the time I graduate, the method will be available to researchers,” said Van.
For Van, and potentially the NIH, the next step after graduation will be to validate that the changes being observed under this high resolution technique are actually a result of Alzheimer’s disease.
“In essence, we are providing a tool, validating a tool, and hopefully people will be using it in years to come,” said Sutton.
Van’s research was also nominated for the Poster Award at the conference of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. She hopes to finish her research and don her hood in August of 2010.