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Congratulations to Collin Merrill, PhD and Vincent Kopplemans, PhD, who recently received K awards for their innovative research at the University of Utah. K awards are Research Career Development Awards from the which helps provide faculty members with funding to help support their research. The goal is to bring investigators to the point where they can conduct their research independently and are competitive for major grant support.

Vincent Koppelmans, PhD

, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. He earned a Master of Science degree in Clinical Neuropsychology from the VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and a Master of Science degree in Health Sciences from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD in Neuro-epidemiology from the same Erasmus University for his dissertation on The Late Effects of Adjuvant Chemotherapy on Brain Function and Structure.

“My broader work focuses on the association between motor dysfunction and brain structure and function in older individuals with depression, Alzheimer's disease, and related dementias.” Said Dr. Koppelmans, “To this end I use a wide variety of existing motor behavioral measures that cover the breadth of motor domains (e.g., gait, balance, dexterity, strength, speed, motor learning, cognitive-motor dual-tasking) as well as self-developed motor tests.”

Vincent's K Award came from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and will allow him to continue his research into the effects of Alzheimer's disease and to quantify behavioral and neural motor dysfunction in situations of mild cognitive impairment.

Collin Merrill, PhD

, currently works at the Department of Psychiatry, Molecular Medicine Program at the University of Utah. Collin does research in Neuroscience and Physiology. Dr. Merrill's K award grant will be focused on alcohol use disorder research.

“The grant is to investigate how chromatin in inhibitory neurons in the brain is involved in alcohol use disorder.” Said Dr Merrill, “I use fruit flies, which are a good model for alcohol use disorders because flies show many of the same behaviors as humans who abuse alcohol: hyperactivity with short-term alcohol exposure that is like being “buzzed,” sedation (or passing out) with longer exposure, and tolerance from repeated use.”

Collin will continue his research in this area analyzing gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurons to understand how the chromatin state within each neuron affects responses to alcohol.