The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) is pleased to announce that UAMS’ Tiffany Miles, Ph.D., and Ellen van der Plas, Ph.D., have received one-year TRI pilot grants of $25,000 each.
Miles is a postdoctoral fellow in the College of Medicine Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Science. The grant will support a project she developed in collaboration with the Boys, Girls, Adults, Community Development Center (BGACDC) of Marvell as part of TRI’s Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Scholars Program.
The project, “Community Developed and Implemented Obesity Interventions in Marvell, AR,” aims to develop a community-led obesity intervention program and develop ideas for sustaining the intervention.
Miles was the academic partner on one of six teams that completed the two-year CBPR training program, which involves collaborations between UAMS-affiliated researchers and community-based organizations to address health disparities and promote community health and well-being.
Miles is also a 2023 graduate of the two-year TRI Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Training Program.
Van der Plas is a neuroscientist and associate professor of pediatric hematology/oncology in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. Her research project, “SONIC Teens: Sickle Cell Neurological Impact and Cognition in Teenagers,” aims to identify neurodevelopmental abnormalities in adolescents ages 12-17 with sickle cell disease using a neurocognitive testing, behavioral assessments, neuroimaging and quantification of protein markers of brain health. She hopes the study will generate compelling data for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 award application. For more information about funding opportunities available through TRI, please visit TRI.uams.edu.