During his work in the hospital and community, he has realized that treatment and rehabilitation of persons with severe mental disorders in India is a priority due to a large treatment gap.  This has driven him to take up community-level work with persons with severe mental disorders as his area of research interest. Research in this area will have significant impact on public health policies in India.  This would also yield important clues about factors that govern the outcome of these disorders across cultures. 

This award would be the first research project with Dr. Kumar as a Principal Investigator.  The experience of conducting a research project under the mentorship of experienced faculty at NIMHANS would be an important stepping-stone in molding himself into a researcher.  Seen in this light, obtaining this award forms a crucial event in Dr. Kumar's academic career. 

United States & Canada/Bipolar Disorder Category:

Winner: Manpreet Singh, MD

Institution: Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA

Title of Winning Proposal: Longitudinal Multimoda Neuroimaging in First Episode Mania

Dr. Singh’s primary research interest is in the neurobiology of pediatric bipolar disorder, and she uses behavioral and multi-modal neuroimaging methods to understand the complex interplay between various biological pathways that lead to emotion dysregulation in adolescents who just experienced their first episode of mania.  She aims to bridge a clinical assessment of emotion dysregulation in adolescents with bipolar disorder (BD) with biologically mediated brain abnormalities to advance our understanding of the pathophysiology of illness progression.  She hopes that her longitudinal assessment of adolescents early in the course of their symptoms of mania will inform the development of improved neurobiologically targeted interventions.  This research aspires to identify modifiable risk factors for BD illness among first-episode adolescents without confounding factors associated with repeated affective episodes.  Information regarding state-dependent changes in BD could be gained, as well as further insight into the natural evolution of BD in pediatric populations.  Dr. Singh is a graduate of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine.  She completed combined residency training in Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and is currently a T32 postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Pediatric Bipolar Disorders Program and Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research.

United States & Canada/Schizophrenia Category:

Winner: Aristotle Voineskos, MD

Institution: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health; University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Title of Winning Proposal: Oligodendrocytes and White Matter in Schizophrenia: Combining Gene Variation, Expression and Diffusion Tensor Imaging in vivo.

Dr. Voineskos completed his MD, and his residency in psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He is currently a fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Dr. Voineskos has undertaken research training in neurogenetics with Dr. James Kennedy in Toronto, and in magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) with Dr. Martha Shenton at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard. Dr. Voineskos is interested in understanding mechanisms of impaired brain connectivity in schizophrenia. Oligodendrocytes comprise the myelin sheath and create the basis for efficient information transfer in the brain by allowing for rapid conduction of neural signals.  Oligodendrocyte genes seem to be differentially regulated in schizophrenia. White matter tracts are large bundles of myelinated axons, that connect brain regions and  show abnormalities with DTI in schizophrenia. Dr. Voineskos’ proposal involves combining gene association, gene expression and DTI approaches to achieve biomarker discovery and advance our understanding of the oligodendrocyte/myelin/white matter pathway in schizophrenia.  With the help of his Astra Zeneca APIRE award patients will have both brain imaging and genetics measures, which, when combined, will provide more powerful answers to questions than either field alone.