Research Grants
The Maine Brain Aneurysm Awareness Committee was pleased to award the 9th annual “KAT-Walk & Karo-5K Research Grant for 2021” to Dr. Robert Ecker and Dr. David Seder of the Maine Medical Center Neuroscience Institute at the Brain Aneurysm Awareness event on September 18, 2021 in Portland, Maine.
With this $5,000 Grant, Dr’s Ecker and Seder will continue to track and analyze information from all MMC patients that have suffered a Brain Aneurysm rupture or hemorrhagic stroke. Their staff will be following up with patients’ months and years after treatment, in order to track patterns around treatment success and what it truly means to “return to normal”.
Data points include: regained independence, quality of life, headache, short-term memory loss, fatigue and concentration. Once the dataset gets large enough, they will extract data for academic work with an expectation over time that this could become a profoundly useful dataset—not just regionally but nationally. Maine is a unique environment as only 4% of our patients seek care out of state. The program at MMC currently draws on 1.8 million lives from Maine and half of New Hampshire. Over time, they will have a unique dataset with excellent longitudinal outcomes that could not be easily recreated elsewhere.
Over the past 13 years, with your support, the Maine Brain Aneurysm Awareness Committee has awarded over $100,000 to research projects conducted in both basic science and clinical applications. To date, some exciting work has been produced in finding better ways to manage SAH, vasospasm, and to understand the mechanism for aneurysm growth.
- In 2020, the $5,000 research grant was awarded to Robert Ecker, MD and David Seder, MD at Maine Medical Center Neuroscience Institute.
- In 2019, the $5,000 research grant was awarded to Robert Ecker, MD and David Seder, MD at Maine Medical Center Neuroscience Institute.
- In 2018, the $5,000 research grant was awarded to Robert Ecker, MD and David Seder, MD at Maine Medical Center Neuroscience Institute.
- In 2017, the $5,000 research grant was awarded to Anand Rughani, MD, Neurosurgeon with Maine Medical Partners
- In 2016, the $5,000 research grant went to Robert Ecker, MD, Medical Director of Maine Medical Center’s Neurosciences Institute.
- In 2015, the $25,000 research grant went to Kimberly P. Kicielinski, MD, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
- In 2014, a $20,000 research grant went to Koji Hosaka, PhD, Dept. Neurosurgery, University of Florida.
- In 2013, the inaugural “Maine’s KAT-Walk & Karo-5K Chair of Research” was established and a $25,000 grant was awarded to Chanannait Paisansathan, MD, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Thank you to everyone who donates and assists our efforts to increase Brain Aneurysm Awareness, Education, Funding of Research, and general support of the Brain Aneurysm community in Maine and northern New England.
