Stead Family Scholars

Georgina Aldridge, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor - Department of Neurology

Aldridge’s lab seeks to bridge human and mouse research by evaluating the underlying causes and contributing factors of multiple-etiology dementia, including Lewy body dementia. She studies the relationship between aggregates that build up in the brain and changes in sleep, mood, cognition, and psychiatric function. With this award, she will monitor these symptoms across time in individuals living with dementia, comparing how symptoms interact and differ by disease type. 

Deniz Atasoy, PhD

Associate Professor - Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology

Atasoy’s research focuses on central neural circuits regulating appetite and glucose homeostasis. With this funding, he plans to investigate the brain stem neural pathways that counter hypoglycemia and how they become defective in hypoglycemia unawareness. 
2023 Scholars

Rebecca Dodd, PhD

Associate Professor - Department of Internal Medicine - Hematology, Oncology, and Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Dodd is co-leader of the Cancer Genes and Pathways program at UI Health Care Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research focuses on understanding cancer growth and metastasis. With this funding, she plans to test innovative anti-cancer therapies and develop biomarkers for metastatic disease.

Lyndsay Harshman, MD, MS

Associate Professor of Pediatrics–Nephrology, Dialysis, and Transplantation 

Harshman studies how kidney disease affects children’s cognitive development. She will use the funding to investigate the causes of these previously observed differences in brain development with advanced neuroimaging and animal models. 

Alejandro Pezzulo, MD

Associate Professor of Internal Medicine–Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine 

Pezzulo’s lab previously developed a system to measure differences in how cells respond to environmental stimuli. He now aims to develop a “stress test” that could be used to create individualized profiles of cellular response for patients with certain chronic diseases. 

Amy Ryan, PhD

Associate Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology 

Ryan’s work concerns a pathway that regulates how lung cells regenerate from damage. Her goal is to find new targets for therapies in a wide range of chronic lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and cystic fibrosis. 

Jennifer Bermick, MD

Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Neonatology

Bermick is expanding the understanding of neonatal immune responses to infection and sepsis to develop therapies that reduce infant mortality associated with these conditions.

Munir Tanas, MD

Associate Professor of Pathology

Tanas' lab explores the role that Hippo pathways, which regulate tissue growth, play in the genesis and metastasis of sarcomas. He aims to better understand these difficult-to-treat cancers in order to develop new therapeutic options.

Mary Weber, PhD, MS

Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology

Weber investigates how pathogens co-opt cellular processes to survive and replicate, with emphasis on Chlamydia trachomatis. The goal is to help prevent and treat chlamydia, the leading cause of non-congenital blindness worldwide.

Ling Yang, PhD

Associate Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology

Yang studies how the body responds to environmental stressors at the molecular, cellular, and organismic levels to find links between those responses and metabolic disorders.