Published July 13, 2012 This content is archived.
Thomas J. Covey, a PhD candidate in neuroscience, is one of only five students nationwide to win a grant from the Lupus Foundation of America.
This marks the second consecutive year that Covey has received the Gina M. Finzi Memorial Student Fellowship.
He will use the $4,000 grant to study brain function and memory impairment in lupus.
Covey’s current project seeks to find patterns of abnormalities in subjects’ brain activity associated with cognitive impairment in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.
Identifying these electrophysiological biomarkers may offer new ways to determine disease progression and help physicians measure the effectiveness of treatments.
A fourth-year PhD student, Covey works in the lab of David W. Shucard, PhD, and Janet L. Shucard, PhD.
His research builds on data collected from lupus patients and healthy controls through an NIH grant awarded to the Shucards.
Finzi fellowships also went to student researchers from Yale, the University of California at Irvine and the University of Virginia.
The fellowship, established in 1984, encourages interest in lupus research among young scientists by funding basic, clinical, translational, epidemiological and behavioral studies under the supervision of established investigators.