StrokeNET Fellowship

Each year, SPIRIT seeks one fellow funded up to $50,000 with 50% dedicated research time while he/she learns methods for clinical research. Each SPIRIT fellow will be paired with a StrokeNet co-investigator faculty mentor, in addition to direct mentorship with Walter Kernan, MD, Director of the SPIRIT Education Core at Yale. All eligible participants submit a cover letter, biosketch, budget, letters of recommendation, and brief research proposal.

• Focus is to evaluate patients’ cerebral autoregulation, the mechanism in which the brain maintains a constant cerebral blood flow despite changes in blood pressure, after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) to determine optimal blood pressure targets, and to access how deviating from personalized autoregulation-based blood pressure targets relates to radiographic and clinical outcomes.

2021-2022 Fellow: Rachel Forman, MD - Yale

• Focus on evaluating the characteristics of stroke patients who participate in home blood pressure monitoring, as well as on identifying testing barriers to help guide future interventions.

2020-2021 Fellow: Yan Hou, MD - Hartford Health

• Focus on ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke in young adults aged 18-35.

2019-2020 Fellow: Jacqueline Geer, MD, Pulmonary Fellow - Yale

• Focus on determining whether OSA increases risk for ICH, severity, and race.

2019-2019 Fellow: Nils Petersen, MD, MSc - Yale

• Focus on the role of autoregulation-based therapies to optimize outcomes after stroke, especially around thrombectomy. Working on identifying patients who are vulnerable to blood pressure reductions during endovascular therapy via neuroimaging profile.

2018-2019 Fellow: Tracy Madsen, MD, ScM — Brown/Rhode Island

• Focus on using REGARDS and GCNKSS to investigate sex differences in stroke incidence and traditional risk factors, use of Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and Framingham Study to look at role of sex hormones in stroke risk in some men, and evaluation/management/outcomes of TIA in women and men.