Foundation-supported research has the power to shape careers, spark new discoveries and improve care for patients facing critical neurological illness.
Hear from grant recipients whose work—from early-stage ideas to transformative discoveries—demonstrates how Neurocritical Care Foundation support advances research, expands opportunity, and drives meaningful progress in neurocritical care, shaping the future of the field.
Alvin S. Das, MD | 2025 Research Training Fellowship Recipient
"I am deeply grateful to the Neurocritical Care Foundation for supporting my work through the 2025 Research Training Fellowship. While I am currently transitioning institutions and the fellowship funding has not yet been fully utilized, this award has already provided important support and momentum for my ongoing research focused on using proteomic approaches to better understand hypertensive arteriopathy—an understudied but important cause of cerebral small vessel disease and intracerebral hemorrhage.
The fellowship funds will directly support the analysis of high-throughput proteomic data, helping generate critical preliminary findings for future NIH grant applications and larger translational studies. In addition to advancing the scientific work itself, the fellowship has enabled continued engagement in neurocritical care research through conference participation, collaboration, and career development opportunities that are essential for early-career investigators.
The diseases encountered in neurocritical care are often devastating for patients and families, and there remains an urgent need for improved mechanistic understanding and therapeutic development. Continued support from programs like the Neurocritical Care Foundation Research Training Fellowship is especially important at a time when research costs continue to rise and preliminary data are increasingly necessary for competitive NIH funding applications. These programs empower early-career investigators to pursue innovative research, build independent research careers, and ultimately contribute to improving outcomes for critically ill neurologic patients.
I am sincerely thankful to the Neurocritical Care Foundation and its donors for their continued investment in trainees and physician-scientists working to advance the field of neurocritical care."
Ericka L. Fink, MD, MS; Michelle Schober, MD, MS; Courtney L. Robertson, MD | 2020 INCLINE Grant Recipients
"Our NCS INCLINE-funded grant was titled, “Global Consortium Study of Neurological Dysfunction in COVID-19 - Pediatrics.” We initiated this study to address a critical knowledge gap regarding neurologic manifestations during clinical presentation, hospitalization, and post-hospitalization periods in children affected by COVID-19 and MIS-C. Pediatric research requires multicenter collaboration given our smaller and heterogeneous population, and we anticipated that pediatric intensivists around the world would be eager to collaborate. At the same time, a colleague at the time in Pittsburgh, Dr. Sherry Chou, who co-initiated the GCS NeuroCOVID Consortium in the adult population, was enthusiastic about a partnership. The NCS INCLINE funding supported salary support for investigators, participating sites, statistical analysis, family participation, and the development of a data collection system.
Our primary finding from Aim 1 (The prevalence of neurological manifestations and association with outcomes in hospitalized children with confirmed or presumed COVID-19 and/or MIS-C) included participation from 46 centers across 10 countries, totaling 3,568 children. Among children with COVID-19, 18% had neurologic manifestations, and among those with MIS-C, 25% had neurologic manifestations during hospitalization. These findings suggest that children and adolescents with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection or MIS-C and severe neurological manifestations may be at higher risk for long-term impairment and may benefit from screening and early intervention to support recovery.
Our primary finding from Aim 2 (analyze functional health, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), neurological assessments, health care utilization, and family impact outcomes after hospital discharge in children with confirmed or presumed COVID-19 and/or MIS-C, with and without neurological manifestations) included participation from 12 centers and a total of 79 children. One-third of children were not fully recovered at follow-up [43 (31, 54) months post-discharge]. In addition, 67% had new or persistent symptoms, most commonly fatigue (37%), weakness (25%), and headache (24%). Forty percent had at least one return emergency visit, and 24% had a hospital readmission. Recovered status was associated with better overall health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Children considered recovered by their parents following hospitalization for SARS-CoV-2-related conditions had fewer symptoms and better HRQOL than those reported as not recovered. Increased inflammation and lower lymphocyte counts on hospital admission may help identify children needing longitudinal, multidisciplinary care.
Overall, this grant was essential to initiating, completing, and disseminating these important findings. It propelled substantial international engagement and collaboration. Multiple secondary studies have been published or are in process, further extending the impact of this work."
Matthew Kirschen, MD, PhD, MSCE | 2018 Research Training Fellowship Recipient
"The Research Training Fellowship from the Neurocritical Care Foundation supported the early development and validation of our standardized bedside neurologic assessment tool, SNAP (Serial Neurologic Assessment in Pediatrics). SNAP was designed to detect early neurologic decline in critically ill children, including those who are mechanically ventilated, sedated, or have baseline developmental disabilities—populations for whom the Glasgow Coma Scale often falls short.
The fellowship funding supported the initial psychometric evaluation of SNAP, providing the critical data needed to validate the tool and support its integration into clinical practice. Today, SNAP is used in pediatric ICUs across the United States and internationally, with additional validation work ongoing. It is also being adopted outside the ICU, where it supports earlier recognition of neurologic change in high-risk children on general medical wards, allowing for more timely transfer to intensive care before irreversible brain injury occurs.
Despite enormous technological advances in neuromonitoring over the past decade, the bedside neurologic examination remains the gold standard for detecting changes in brain function. Having a standardized, reliable approach to performing that exam—and communicating findings among care teams—is essential not only for individual patient care, but also for generating consistent, comparable data that advances neurocritical care research.
This fellowship was truly foundational. As an early-career investigator, it provided the support needed to transform a clinically grounded idea into a validated tool now being used at the bedside of critically ill children around the world."
Edilberto Amorim, MD | 2016 Research Training Fellowship Recipient
"At the time of the fellowship, my research focused on resting-state and quantitative EEG analysis in acute brain injury, particularly cardiac arrest coma, with an emphasis on prognostication. The funding supported the development of quantitative EEG pipelines and large-scale data collection through multicenter neurocritical care collaborations across the United States and Europe. It also helped launch my independent laboratory at UCSF, which focuses on computational neurocritical care to better understand neurorecovery and secondary brain injury after neurologic injury.
The support enabled the creation of one of the largest multicenter neurophysiology datasets in cardiac arrest to date through the International Cardiac Arrest Research Consortium (I-CARE). This dataset became the foundation for the 2023 PhysioNet Challenge and has supported hundreds of publications in quantitative EEG, deep learning, and outcome prediction. The fellowship also provided the scientific foundation and preliminary data needed to secure subsequent funding from the NIH, Department of Defense, American Heart Association, and other foundations.
This program was instrumental in helping me transition from trainee to independent investigator and establish a multidisciplinary computational neuroscience and neurocritical care research program. The support fostered collaborations across engineering, neuroscience, critical care, and artificial intelligence while helping train the next generation of clinician-scientists and data scientists. Continued financial support is essential to sustain innovation in AI-driven neuroscience research and accelerate discoveries that improve outcomes for patients with traumatic brain injury, stroke, cardiac arrest, and disorders of consciousness."
David Y. Hwang, MD, FAAN, FAHA, FCCM, FNCS | 2015 Research Training Fellowship Recipient