IBACS Seed Grants provide funding for collaborative research projects across the brain and cognitive sciences. Seed Grants also support applications for equipment, research workshops, events, and other activities compatible with the mission of the Institute.
2025-2026 Recipients
Learn about the PIs and projects that received IBACS Seed Grants this year.
Alice Burghard, UCH Neuroscience
Title of Project: Development of an Objective Test for Tinnitus in Human Subjects
Tinnitus affects millions of people worldwide. Currently, there is no cure nor an objective test for tinnitus available. Our patented long-duration sound (LDS) stimulation paradigm revealed significant differences in auditory brainstem responses (ABR) between tinnitus and non-tinnitus mice. We will record ABRs in response to our LDS paradigm in human subjects with and without tinnitus to confirm our animal results and further optimize analysis parameters to detect tinnitus on an individual basis objectively.
Torri Woodruff-Gautherin, Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences
Title of Project: KEEP - Key Elements of Engaged Play: How parents and children play with toys
This project, KEEP (Key Elements of Engaged Play) is focused on developing a new way of describing how children and caregivers play with each other when using toys. Play is how children learn so finding new ways to describe it, specifically that apply to children who are D/deaf and Hard of Hearing is extremely important. The better we can describe the main parts of play, the better we can do research to understand play!
Michael Kienzler, Chemistry
Title of Project: Photoswitchable activators and inhibitors for the modulation of KCNQ channel function
TBD
Deborah Schneider, Psychological Sciences
Title of Project: Stop, Feel, Go: How Emotions Affect Our Ability to Stop and Think
We all know emotions can interfere with decision-making, but exactly how does this work? This project tests how different types of emotional content—words we read or hear, and facial expressions—affect our ability to stop automatic responses. By understanding these relationships, we can better design research and interventions for people who struggle with impulse control and emotional regulation.
Natale Sciolino, Physiology and Neurobiology
Title of Project: Integrative Neuroscience of Addiction: Systems and Behavioral Effects of Ketamine Metabolites
Opioid use disorder causes severe withdrawal symptoms that current treatments often fail to address. Ketamine may ease these symptoms, but side effects limit its use. A metabolite, (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine (HNK), could offer a safer alternative, yet its role in withdrawal is unclear. Our project uses viral genetics, fiber photometry, and machine-learning behavior analysis to reveal how HNK influences key brain cell types during withdrawal—insights that could guide development of more effective therapies for opioid addiction.
Ian Stevenson, Psychological Sciences
Title of Project: Statistical Models of Neural Activity with Latent Variables
Neuroscience experiments typically measure only a small fraction of the neurons that might be relevant to a behavior or disorder. Our goal in this project is to develop new statistical models to describe measurements that are available (spikes and local fields) and, also, accurately identify hidden factors (latent variables) driving neural activity. We will test our data analysis using simulations and analyze public experimental datasets to better characterize neural function and dysfunction.
Shuyan Wang, Linguistics
Title of Project: Early Language Development in Mandarin-English Bilingual Children: A Longitudinal Corpus Study
This project establishes a longitudinal corpus of Mandarin–English bilingual children to investigate how early bilingual language develops over time. Children will be followed through repeated naturalistic interactions in both languages, allowing us to track vocabulary growth, syntactic development, code-mixing, and patterns of child-directed input. The resulting corpus will provide a valuable resource for understanding individual differences in bilingual development and will generate pilot data to inform bilingual language assessment and future externally funded research.
Kai Yu, Biomedical Engineering
Title of Project: Boosting Brain Signals with Ultrasound for Robotic Stroke Rehabilitation
After stroke, the brain signals that express a survivor’s intention to move can be too weak for brain-controlled assistive robots to read reliably. This project tests a new strategy: using precisely targeted, low-intensity focused ultrasound during attempted movement to modulate and strengthen those signals in real time. By making movement intentions more detectable, the system may allow robots to assist at the right moment, turning therapy into a more responsive, brain-guided recovery process.
Hanlin Zhou, Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies
Title of Project: Mapping the Mind's Flood Risk Map: An AI-driven Analysis of Human Flood Risk Perception
This project aims to measure and explain subjective environmental risk perception across the New England region. It integrates human judgments of street view images from a survey with a deep learning computational framework to generate a high-resolution perceptual risk map. It also applies geospatial explainable artificial intelligence to identify how specific visual landscape features and individual-level factors drive intuitive human environmental risk assessments.
Ying Zhou, Statistics
Title of Project: How Alzheimer’s Proteins Affect Brain and Cognition
This project combines multiple types of brain data to understand how Alzheimer’s disease leads to memory and thinking problems. Using causal mediation analysis, we will separate the direct effects of toxic brain proteins from their indirect effects through changes in brain structure and function. By integrating this information, the study aims to clarify disease pathways and support earlier detection and better treatment strategies.