Oswego State professor Sungeun Kim recently received a grant award of nearly $119,000 to further his research on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The grant is from the National Institute on Aging and the National Library of Medicine of the National Institute of Health and is meant to assist in work that Kim has already begun in collaboration with two other researchers.

Kim’s partners are Indiana University colleague Kwangsik Nho and Geisinger Health System faculty member Dokyoon Kim. They are working together to find earlier and more accurate diagnoses of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Kim’s research and interests span across bioinformatics, bioinstrumentation, neuroscience, and genetics, which is partly why he was chosen to be joint head of this project. Bioinformatics develops methods for understanding biological data, and bioinstrumentation is the use of bioelectric instruments for the recording or transmitting of physiological information.

“[The] primary reason is to allocate our time to work on this project,” Kim said. “Also, only three [principal investigators] are not enough to develop programs that we proposed because we need more manual labor and non-technical expertise in this project. In addition to this salary portion in our budget, we allocate money for travel to attend related conferences, publication, purchasing computing equipment and some others.”

Kim hopes to hire several students, both undergraduate and graduate, to assist him with this project. Kim said the grant gives them time, resources and extra hands and opinions to contribute toward the study.

Kim said he hopes to gain insight into potential treatment methods for Alzheimer’s.

“Alzheimer’s disease as an exemplar is an increasingly common progressive neurodegenerative condition with no validated disease modifying treatment,” Kim said. “The proposed multivariate methods are likely to help identify novel diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for [Alzheimer’s disease].”

With his methods, Kim hopes to be able to identify neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease earlier and more effectively.

Kim is teaching a class on electromagnetics and a seminar in electrical and computer engineering this fall at Oswego State in addition to developing a bioinstrumentation course for the future. Kim said that the extra time and money given by the National Institute on Aging can go a long way toward the success of this project.

Wilson Kane, an Oswego State student, has a grandparent with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Seeing the toll it takes on not only the person itself, but the family as well, I think it’s toward a good cause,” Kane said. “Maybe he will find answers about the disease that we did not know before.”

More than 5 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease, and 1 in 10 adults over the age of 65 has the disease, according to alz.org, the official Alzheimer’s Organization website.

Kim said that the research he and his colleagues are working on hopes to combat the steady rise in percentage of Americans with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Photo: Taylor Woods | The Oswegonian