I am truly honored to receive the Jonathan and Joshua Memorial Scholarship. My PhD is deeply personal, shaped by both personal and professional experiences in which I witnessed how current cognitive assessments in clinical settings often result in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders being misdiagnosed or detected too late for treatments to be most effective. These experiences inspired me to focus my research on identifying early cognitive changes that can detect if an individual is at risk for a cognitive disorder before severe cognitive decline occurs.

My research specifically focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, inspired by my grandmother who experienced late-diagnosed dementia. However, the methods I have developed can be applied to a wide range of conditions. I use innovative mouse models that closely replicate human Alzheimer’s disease, combined with cutting-edge touch screen-based cognitive tests that are almost identical for mice and humans. This allows us to directly compare cognition across species, understand how particular cognitive changes and biological risk factors indicate an individual’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease, and be much more confident that treatments that improve cognition in mice will also work in humans. By linking early cognitive changes with risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, we can determine when someone is most at risk and identify the best time to implement treatments, giving patients and families the opportunity to intervene sooner and improve quality of life. With the support of this scholarship, I am one step closer to my goal of leading research that advances early detection and develops more effective treatments for neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. I am incredibly grateful for the honour and privilege of holding this scholarship, and I cannot thank you enough!

All the best,
Cadence

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Cadence Opoka, B.Sc. (Hons)

PhD Student – Translational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (TCNLab) 

Western University

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I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. McKinnon and all the donors for your gracious support for Western graduate students, like myself, working on research in mental health and neurodegenerative diseases. It is an honour to be chosen as one of the Jonathan & Joshua Memorial Graduate Scholarship awardees. Support from this award goes beyond financial security, it allows me to focus more on my research and to seek out additional opportunities to attend conferences, sharing my work and exchanging ideas with other researchers. I am also extremely grateful for the recognition of the potential of my research and this motivates me to continue enthusiastically forward!

My research focuses on developing and evaluating a tool that can identify individuals most at risk of developing dementia at an early enough stage that lifestyle changes would be enough to reduce risk or even prevent development of dementia. Since dementia is a disease of a very long course, identification of risk in order to reduce downstream implications associated with dementia diagnosis and disease course, needs to be accurate and precise. Previous research has found that certain lifestyle risk factors, when improved can reduce or prevent dementia. Therefore, I’m working to create an algorithm that can be applied by Canadian family doctors to identify different levels of risk in their patients, so they can be recommended the best preventive interventions to prevent dementia.

Thank you again for your generous support for Western’s graduate students.

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 Patricia Nistor MSc, PhD Student

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry

Western University

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Hi Everyone, It is my pleasure to be at the 19^th annual Jonathon and Joshua Memorial Golf Tournament.  I think this is my fifth time attending the tournament and I have two reasons for being here. First, I am now the former Associate Dean for Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and I am very happy to introduce the new Associate Dean, Dr. Nica Borradaile, who will be representing the faculty at this amazing event moving forward.  Secondly, in my role as Associate Dean, I had quite a few duties that come along with the role and I would very much like to thank Bob and all of you here because attending this event was perhaps the most enjoyable of those duties.  Every year I was able to bring along some of our amazing graduate students that have benefited from your tremendous efforts and meet many of you personally.  

 Science has been having a bit of a rough time lately and for those of us that do biomedical research, it is frankly pretty depressing. To come to this event where so many people, from all walks of life, come together to support graduate student doing basic research into neuroscience and mental health gives me as a scientist a great deal of hope.   I have spent much of the last five years trying to support graduate students. The funding from the J&J goes to support graduate students and that support is valuable which also makes me happy.  In a few minutes, you will meet three of this year's recipients and I think they will clearly show you what these awards mean to these students and their careers.  They are the future, and you are doing a lot to support that.  Thanks again to Bob and the crew for the last five years and I hope to continue keeping in touch with this event.  For now, I am thrilled to have you meet Nica Borradaile, who will pass on official thanks from the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry."

 Cheers, Tom

Dr. Tom Drysdale

Associate Dean, Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies

Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry

University of Western Ontario

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It’s such a privilege to meet this amazing community, and to introduce you to three of this year’s J & J Memorial Scholarship winners. These are highly competitive Scholarships at Western University and at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. It is difficult to put into words just how meaningful these Scholarships are – through your generosity, you are not only supporting outstanding research in the area of mental and brain health, but you are ensuring that the outstanding graduate students who do this important work can focus their time on research. Thank you again for your continued support.

Nica

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Nica Borradaile, PhD

Associate Dean, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies

Associate Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology

Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry

Western University

London, Ontario

Canada

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I am writing to thank you for your generous support through the Jonathan & Joshua MemorialGraduate Travel Scholarship. I am very happy and appreciative to receive this scholarship.

I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation for the incredible support that you haveprovided to graduate students through this scholarship. Graduate school is tricky to navigate,especially financially, and receiving this support has given me the time and opportunity to focus onmy research and truly excel in it.

The support from thisscholarship is instrumental in advancing our understanding of the various mental health disordersthat burden our communities. This field is of prominent interest to myself.

Receiving an award like this asa Graduate Student allows me to put more time into my workand eases the financial burden that many of us students face.This truly has made a difference in my final year here at Westernand I know your work will continue to benefit many students tocome.

I studied Psychology in Turkey and then started Neuroscience graduate program at WesternUniversity. My research focuses on using ultra-high field MRI to image rodent brains andunderstanding rodent cognition. We are investigating functional brain networks in AlzheimerDisease to find early biomarkers for the prevention and treatment of the disease.

Neil Donison is a senior PhD candidate in Dr. Michael Strong’s Lab at Robarts Research Institute, Western University, London, Ontario. Neil’s research investigates the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration associated with traumatic brain injury and other related diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and Alzheimer’s disease.

I am Tom Drysdale, and I am here as the Associate Dean for the Graduate & PostdoctoralStudies for the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western. It is my great honour tobe at the Jonathan and Joshua Annual Golf Tournament to both honour the memory ofJonathan and Joshua, and to thank the participants for their support of mental health research.The funds raised by the Jonathan and Joshua tournament are used to fund scholarships forgraduate student studying mental health as part of their thesis. Two of the students, Neil andEsmin, have come along with me to personally thank Bob and the tournament participants fortheir amazing efforts.

I would like to thank everyone who made today possible. Thank you, Mr. McKinnon and allthe donors, for graciously supporting Western graduate students in our aim to making a difference inthe field of mental health and neurodegenerative research. Words truly cannot express how gratefuland touched I am to have received the Jonathan and Joshua Memorial Graduate Scholarship.

My name is Aya Arrar, I am a fourth year PhD student in the neuroscience department at WesternUniversity. I would first like to say thank you for your support that allows me to work on researchthat I am truly passionate about.

Hello everyone! I am honoured to be a recipient of the Jonathan and Joshua graduate scholarshipand to be able to join you tonight. I would like to start by thanking Bob, his family, and all of you foryour invaluable support. As graduate students it is incredibly motivating to meet individualsinterested in our work.