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STSI/SGM postdoctoral scholar Ashley Scott-VanZeeland awarded Dickinson Fellowship
February 12, 2010
Scripps Translational Science Institute/Scripps Genomic Medicine is pleased to announce that Dr. Ashley Scott-VanZeeland has been awarded a 2009 Dickinson Fellowship.
After obtaining her doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of California Los Angeles, Ashley joined Scripps Genomic Medicine as a post-doctoral researcher in April of 2009. Ashley's impressive doctoral work and her enthusiasm for combining genetics and brain imaging caught the attention of Dr. Nicholas Schork, Director of Bioinformatics & Biostatistics at Scripps Translational Science Institute. Prior to her arrival at Scripps, Ashley studied the neural basis of autism, particularly through combining functional neuroimaging and genetics. She has also worked to identify common cognitive constructs between developmental disorders thought to share genetic risk factors, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia and speech impairment.
In her short time at Scripps, Ashley has been involved in collaborative investigations evaluating the genetic contributions to neuropsychiatric illnesses, including anorexia nervosa, Alzheimer’s disease, and autism, a disorder in which Ashley has significant expertise from her earlier career training.
Ashley aspires to continue combining multiple sources of information to discover risk markers for psychiatric disorders across the life span: brain imaging, DNA sequencing, clinical assessments and behavior. Her ultimate research goal is to better predict the onset and progression of neuropsychiatric disorders at the earliest stage, and eventually change the way patients receive treatment based on their predictive markers. These goals also require an understanding of how the brain is supposed to grow and develop over time.
As a Dickinson Fellow, Ashley intends to pursue independent projects as well. Building off of her previous imaging genetics work in autism, she is beginning to investigate the genetic factors that contribute to the crystallization of language processing networks in the developing brain. Utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging to probe developmental changes in how brain networks process linguistic information, she aims to identify which brain-related genes contribute to the changes in these networks over time.
Motivated by her love for children and lifetime interest in brain development, Ashley aspires to find early identification markers for autism and other brain disorders. Becoming the second Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Foundation fellow will support her desire to impact the field of neurogenomic medicine and give her a foundation to become one of the elite genomic scientists of the future.
ABOUT SCRIPPS TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Scripps Translational Science Institute, a collaboration of nine institutions of which Scripps Genomics Medicine is a part, was established in 2007 with the substantial support of Scripps Health as well as a $20 million Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health. STSI is one of only 46 research centers in the United States to receive this prestigious honor, the first in Southern California and the only program not affiliated with a university to ever secure this type of funding.
ABOUT THE DONALD C. AND ELIZABETH M. DICKINSON FOUNDATION
The Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Foundation was established in January 1995 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation to provide financial assistance to charitable organizations supporting, primarily, programs in education, medicine and Western heritage. Donald and Elizabeth Dickinson believed that the intellectual and physical well being of individuals is strongly influenced by the quality of education and medical care received over their lifetimes; people who are well-educated and healthy are most likely to lead productive lives and make a meaningful contribution to society at large. The Dickinson's felt that established educational healthcare institutions have the greatest opportunity to meaningfully assist the largest number of individuals; therefore, the institutions sponsoring the most beneficial programs should be supported.
