For over a decade, AFTD Postdoctoral Fellowships have funded the next generation of FTD researchers during the critical final phase of their training. This year, generous support from the Holloway Family Fund allowed AFTD to update and expand the fellowship program, demonstrating our commitment to maintaining the pipeline of promising early-career investigators.

AFTD is pleased to announce the first of these 2021-2023 Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowships, awarded to Daniel Okobi, MD, PhD for his proposal, “Neuronal network dysfunction in neurodegenerative disease.” Dr. Okobi, a neurology resident and postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Peyman Golshani at UCLA, will use miniatured microscopes implanted in the brains of mice with an FTD-associated mutation to image brain pathways in the animals as they go about their normal activities. In addition, he will monitor the behavior of the mice, including their responses to social cues, using high-resolution video capture. Together, these state-of-the-art methods will allow Dr. Okobi to detect subtle abnormalities that represent the earliest signs of the FTD disease process.

We look forward to announcing the additional recipients of the 2021–2023 Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowships next month.