Congratulations to Dr. Mo (Mo-Kyung) Sin, Associate Professor of Nursing, on her recent award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This 2-year award was funded through the NIH National Institute on Aging as part of the “Small Research Grant Program for the Next Generation of Researchers in Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias.”

With support from the NIH, Dr. Sin will study risk factors associated with cognitive decline in older adults. She will specifically focus on the relationship between blood pressure and cerebral amyloid angiopathy formation, as mediated by the presence of APOE ε4 allele, a strong genetic risk factor for both early- and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. To do so, Dr. Sin will use data from the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study, a longitudinal dataset collected by Kaiser Permanente and the University of Washington since 1996 that follows patients of the Kaiser Permanente throughout their lives.

Ultimately, Dr. Sin’s research will build foundational knowledge to support mechanisms for early diagnosis and treatment of dementia in older adults. This is the second NIH grant awarded to Dr. Sin as Principal Investigator in the last two years, an unprecedented accomplishment among SU investigators!