These awardees were encouraged to apply for the full Pilot Awards. These awards recognized the excellence of their initial proposals.
2025-2026 Cycle
- Lauren Bangerter, PhD
- Organization: Georgetown University School of Medicine
- Grant Title: Delirium Superimposed on Dementia and Lucid Episodes
- Richard Lennertz, MD, PhD
- Organization: University of Wisconsin Madison
- Grant Title: Cerebral Metabolic Failure in Delirium and Dementia
- Hsing-Hua Sylvia Lin, MS, PhD
- Organization: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- Grant Title: Relationship between Postoperative Delirium and AD/ADRD among the Elderly Population
- Jessica Rove, MD
- Organization: University of Colorado School of Medicine
- Grant Title: Preoperative Daily Step Count and Risk of Hyperactive versus Hypoactive Delirium after Cardiac Surgery
- Felipe Salech, MD, PhD
- Organization: Universidad de Chile
- Grant Title: Nicotinamide: A Novel Strategy to Tackle the Common Pathophysiology between Delirium and Alzheimer’s Disease
- Priyanka Shrestha, PhD
- Organization: George Washington University School of Nursing
- Grant Title: Designing a Caregiver Support Program for Effective Communication and Responsive Engagement for Delirium Superimposed on dementia (DSD) at Home
- Kelly Toth, PhD
- Organization: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- Grant Title: Variability in Clinician Decision-Making for Management of Delirium During Critical Illness
- Johannes Trabert, MD
- Organization: AGAPLESION Markus Hospital
- Grant Title: Family Centered Delirium Treatment in Geriatric Patients with Acute Delirium
- Kyosuke Yamanishi, MD, PhD
- Organization: Stanford University School of Medicine
- Grant Title: IL-18, A Novel Therapeutic Candidate for Delirium and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias
- Rola Zeidan, PhD
- Organization: University of Florida
- Grant Title: The Role of Iron Dyschomeostasis and M1/M2 Macrophage Imbalance in Sepsis-Associated Delirium Pathophysiology
2024-2025 Cycle
- Christina Boncyk, MD, MPH
- Organization: Vanderbilt University Medical Center
- Grant Title: Investigating the Association of Plasma Biomarkers for Neurologic Vulnerability and Injury with Delirium and Long-Term Cognitive Impairment: A Sub-Study of a Randomized Clinical Trial Among Critically Ill Septic Adults
- Christine Eckhardt, MD, PhD
- Organization: Medical University Innsbruck, Austria
- Grant Title: DANI-Study: Predicting Postoperative Delirium and Cognition with Heart Rate Variability obtained by Analgesia Nociception Index and Biomarkers- A Prospective Clinical Pilot Study
- Sunyang Fu, PhD
- Organization: The University of Texas Health Science Center
- Grant Title: AI-Empowered Differential Detection of Patients with Delirium, Dementia, and DSD
- Sarah Goldberg, MD, MPH
- Organization: Boston Children’s Hospital
- Grant Title: Neurodevelopmental outcomes of pediatric congenital heart disease patients who experience delirium after cardiopulmonary bypass
- Hsing-Hua Sylvia Lin, MS, PhD
- Organization: University of Pittsburgh
- Grant Title: Relationship between postoperative delirium and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or AD-related dementias (ADRD) among the All of US elderly surgical population cohort
- Tina McKay, PhD
- Organization: Massachusetts General Hospital
- Grant Title: Comparative Study of Microtubule-Associated Proteins in ADRD and Delirium
- Anita Nitchingham, MBBS
- Organization: Prince of Wales Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Australia
- Grant Title: Exploring Intranasal Insulin’s Impact on Postoperative Delirium Biomarkers and its Potential Link to Long-Term Cognitive Health in Older Adults: A Feasibility Study
- Davin Quinn, MD
- Organization: University of New Mexico
- Grant Title: Electroencephalographic and Circular RNA Biomarkers of Post-Operative Delirium and Cognitive Dysfunction in Older Adults
2023-2024 Cycle
- Meera Agar, MBBS, FAChPM, FRACP, MPC, PhD
- Organization: University of Technology (Sydney, Australia)
- Grant Title: BLiPD – A phase II randomized controlled open-label trial of bright light therapy for the prevention of delirium in hospitalized adults with advanced cancer
- Kelly Atkins, PhD
- Organization: St. Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, The University of Melbourne/Weill Cornell Medicine
- Grant Title: Feasibility of the ZMax™ Headband for use with older adults at risk of postoperative delirium
- Adrian Austin, MD, MSCR
- Organization: University of North Carolina
- Grant Title: The Feasibility of Establishing Cognitive Trajectories of Delirium and Subsyndromal Delirium
- Christina Boncyk, MD, MPH
- Organization: Vanderbilt University Medical Center
- Grant Title: Investigating the Association of Plasma Biomarkers for Neurologic Vulnerability and Brain Injury with Delirium and Long-Term Cognitive Impairment: A Sub-Study of a Randomized Clinical Trial Among Critically Ill Septic Adults
- Thiago Avelino da Silva, MD, PhD
- Organization: Hospital das Clinicas HCFMUSP, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Grant Title: Neuropathological findings in older adults with delirium: a postmortem pilot study
- Laurie Lee, MN NP
- Organization: University of Calgary
- Grant Title: Comfort-holding in Critically Ill Kids (CHiCKs): A pilot feasibility study
- Shih-Yin Lin, PhD, MPH, MM
- Organization: New York University
- Grant Title: Development and Validation of a Delirium Caregiving Self-Efficacy Scale
- Allyson Palmer, MD, PhD
- Organization: Mayo Clinic
- Grant Title: Cellular Senescence as a Novel Therapeutic Target in Delirium
- Eleonora Rollo, PhD
- Organization: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome
- Grant Title: Sleep biomarkers of sTrOke-related deliRiuM: the STORM pilot study
- Niccolo Terrando, BSc, DIC, PhD
- Organization: Duke University
- Grant Title: Role of neutrophilic Lipocalin-2 in postoperative delirium
2022-2023 Cycle
- Shih-Yin Lin, PhD, MPH, MM
- Organization: New York University
- Grant Title: Developing a family-centered behavioral intervention to improve prevention and detection of delirium superimposed on dementia in community dwelling older adults
- Bjorn Erik Neerland, MD, PhD
- Organization: Oslo Delirium Research Group, Department of Geriatric Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Norway
- Grant Title: Delirium as a modifiable risk factor for dementia
- Brian O’Gara, MD, MPH
- Organization: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, Harvard Medical School
- Grant Title: Cognitive prehabilitation to prevent POD
- Ben Palanca, MD, PhD, MSc
- Organization: Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
- Grant Title: MD FluNCS: Mitigating Delirium with Fluvoxamine Treatment for Non- Cardiac Surgery
- Jean-Francois Pittet, MD, DEAA
- Organization: Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Grant Title: Delirium, Long-term Cognitive Impairment and Bacterial Infection- induced Endothelial Proteopathy
- Mouhsin Shafi, MD, PhD
- Organization: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
- Grant Title: Validation of EEG-based predictors of postoperative delirium
- Stephanie Sigaut, MD, PhD
- Organization: Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, APHP.Nord – Université de Paris Hôpital Beaujon, Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care
- Grant Title: Inflammatory response in patients with postoperative delirium and effect of melatonin
- Kendall Smith, MD, PhD
- Organization: Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine Dept. of Anesthesiology
- Grant Title: Transcriptomic circadian rhythms in POD
- Robert Stevens, MD, FCCM
- Organization: Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
- Grant Title: Machine Learning Prediction and Detection of Intensive Care Unit Delirium
- Sarinnapha Vasunilashorn, PhD
- Organization: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
- Grant Title: Do Polygenic Risk Scores of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Identify the Delirium-Vulnerable Brain?