Dr. Katie Hunzinger is a biomechanist and clinical exercise physiology currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Exercise Science at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. At the time of receiving the award she was an NINDS T32 funded postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania-Perelman School of Medicine in the Departments of Neurology and Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics under the mentorship of Dr. Andrea Schneider, MD, PhD. Dr. Hunzinger’s research focuses on utilizing large datasets to investigate the long-term morbidity associated with traumatic brain injury and repetitive head impacts across the lifespan. Dr. Hunzinger will be traveling to the University of Glasgow to work with Dr. Willie Stewart to define stroke risk in a cohort of prior rugby and football players compared to matched general population controls; secondary analyses will compare dementia risk among those with and without history of stroke. As a newly hired junior faculty member this award will enable Dr. Hunzinger to expand her research expertise and create international collaborations that she will be able to utilize for future research projects.

The TEAM-VISA committee is pleased to announce Dr. Rachel Rowe as the 2016 WiNTR Visiting International Scholar. Dr. Rowe is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Translational Neurotrauma Research Program at the Barrow Neurological Institute at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Mentored by Dr. Jonathan Lifshitz, Dr. Rowe’s research has focused on sleep and endocrine dysfunction after TBI, driving her interest in the chronic effects of CNS injury. Dr. Rowe was recently awarded funding from the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium to further her exciting new investigation of chronic neuroinflammation after pediatric TBI in rats. Dr. Rowe will be using the WiNTR-VISA to travel to the University of Tasmania in Australia where she will receive training in the histopathological evaluation of markers of brain aging from Dr. James Vickers, Professor of Pathology and Co-Director of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Center, and Dr. Jenna Ziebell, an expert in immunohistochemistry and neuroinflammation. In addition to hands-on training in the lab, Dr. Rowe will also have the opportunity to network with a diverse array of researchers and clinicians at the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Center, and present her current research project to senior scientists.