University of Iowa graduate student Ben Kreitlow has won the 2024 Kwak-Ferguson Fellowship, a $10,000 award from the Iowa Neuroscience Institute for an upper-level graduate student working in the area of neurodegenerative diseases.

Kreitlow is a student in the combined MD/PhD Medical Scientist Training Program who is in his fourth year in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience. His research mentor is Gordon Buchanan, MD, PhD, the Beth L. Tross Epilepsy Professor in neurology. His research focuses on how time of day and circadian rhythms may increase risk of death following a seizure. Kreitlow is characterizing seizures and seizure-related death in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD), the APP/PS1 mouse. He is examining the well-known but poorly understood interaction between seizures and epilepsy in ADRD.

The fellowship will support Kreitlow’s travel to the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago in October to present, “Nighttime Tendency of Spontaneous Spike-and-Wave Discharges and Seizure-Associated Death in Young APP/PS1 Mice.”

Kreitlow’s research was highlighted in the UI Vice President for Research 2024 Dare to Discover campaign, and he was one of two graduate students selected to meet with state legislators to discuss science and research at the 2024 Hawkeye Caucus day in Des Moines. Buchanan said this reflects his commitment to education and advocacy as well as to advancing his own research.

“Ben is a truly exceptional graduate student,” Buchanan said. “He has a passion for understanding underling mechanisms for neurological disease to apply research to improve the lives of patients.”

The Kwak-Ferguson Fellowship was established by Donald Timm, a Muscatine native and graduate of the UI College of Law who spent more than 30 years working for the U.S. Department of Defense as an expert on international law. He created the fellowship in honor of two individuals—his friend and mentor, Mr. Myung-Duk Kwak, a Korean attorney and statesman, and his aunt, Louise A.M. (Amelia Marie) Brown Ferguson, an educator and missionary—both of whom died due to complications from Parkinson’s disease.