News

Congratulations to Thomas Karikari, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), and Rebecca Thurston, PhD (Pittsburgh Foundation Chair in Women's Health and Dementia and Professor of Psychiatry, Clinical and Translational Science, Epidemiology and Psychology), who have each received a University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award!

Dr. Karikari, who received an award for distinguished research in the junior scholar category, was honored for his substantial contributions to research on Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration. He is a globally recognized expert in the discovery, method development, technical validation, and real-world implementation of blood biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative diseases. He leads or collaborates on multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded studies in this field, and serves as director of the Biomarker and Neurogenetics Core of Pitt’s NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC).

Dr. Karikari has discovered critical pathological protein insights and developed novel blood biomarker methods for amyloid-beta, tau, and neurodegeneration—the three main pillars of Alzheimer’s disease. He has acquired a patent for a novel method to measure phosphorylated tau, which can be used to diagnose patients with tauopathies such as Alzheimer’s disease, and his lab has filed three additional patents. In 2024, Clarivate recognized Dr. Karikari as a Highly Cited Researcher, based on his publications ranking in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science.

Dr. Thurston, who received an award for distinguished research in the senior scholar category, conducts pioneering research in menopause, mental health, and cerebrovascular health in women. An international leader in women’s health, Dr. Thurston was honored for her research’s profound impact on public discourse and policy, which has transformed the understanding of menopause as a critical life stage affecting cardiovascular and brain health. She is a principal investigator of the National Institute on Aging-funded Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a multi-decade, longitudinal, multi-ethnic cohort study of menopause. She additionally leads one of SWAN’s three scientific projects. Dr. Thurston leads or collaborates on multiple additional NIH grants. She has served as president of the Menopause Society, the preeminent scientific organization in her field, and she is an elected fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and of the Society for Biopsychosocial Science.

Based upon Dr. Thurston’s work, menopausal hot flashes, the hallmark menopausal symptom, are now understood to be not a benign nuisance symptom, but a novel, female-specific risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Dr. Thurston extended this work to the brain, showing for the first time hot flashes linked to MRI-indicators of cerebrovascular risk and circulating amyloid, processes central to the pathophysiology of dementia. Finally, Dr. Thurston’s research has shown sexual harassment, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence to be critical determinants of women’s mental health, as well as their cardiovascular and brain health. 

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Karikari and Dr. Thurston!