Conrad Tucker was giving a talk on the idea of using technology to capture students’ body posture to determine their attention level in the classroom. In the audience was a member of Parkinson’s disease researcher and clinician Xuemei Huang’s research team, who approached Tucker afterward about a connection between his talk and Huang’s research into using changes in a person’s walking gait to diagnose Parkinson’s earlier. The rest, as they say, is history.

Penn State College of Medicine’s Dr. Deepa Sekhar will partner with six urban Pennsylvania public high schools and involve more than 9,000 students in research to address the rise of depression and suicide in children. Sekhar’s team is studying use of a school-based screening for clinical depression and was recently awarded a three-year, $2 million funding award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. The project was developed with help from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Community Engagement Studios.

There’s a better way to evaluate the effectiveness of health interventions. It can help make health interventions not only effective, but scalable, affordable and reduce complexity. When testing an intervention that is trying to modify health attitudes or behaviors — like a smoking cessation program — the Multiphase Optimization Strategy, or MOST, approaches the research process from a vantage point borrowed from the engineering world.

Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute has been awarded a $416,000 grant from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences for a pilot program to better understand the issues facing rural communities and address a decline in American life expectancy.

Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute is helping generate innovative health research ideas and promoting collaboration through the awarding of pilot grants in its Bridges to Translation IV program. This program seeks to link researchers not traditionally in health research with those who can help mold a new idea. Six diverse projects have been funded, giving researchers an opportunity to further explore new ideas and gather more information in preparation for larger grant opportunities from outside organizations.

As part of its mission to accelerate discoveries to benefit human health, the Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute will award up to $300,000 in funding for pilot projects through its Bridges to Translation V pilot grant program. A request for application workshop will be held on Oct. 17 at the University Park campus; lunch will be provided and is an opportunity for networking to promote collaboration. Registration is required by Oct. 3. Transportation will be available from Hershey to University Park with registration.

The Penn State Profiles website, a database of Penn State researchers and their expertise, will be taken offline at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12, and replaced with a new site.