Ann M. Stowe, PhD, FAHA

I am currently a tenured Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience. My PhD focused on the response of remote cortical motor areas to stroke-induced injury in non-human primates. My first postdoctoral position at the University of Kansas was conducting a clinical rehabilitation study in post-stroke patients with chronic motor deficits. I continued training as a Postdoctoral Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis where I learned rodent models of stroke. From there, I was recruited to my first faculty position at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Neurology prior to moving to the University of Kentucky. My lab’s overarching hypothesis is that the adaptive immune system plays a fundamental role in functional plasticity and subsequent motor and cognitive recovery within the injured brain. Preclinical studies investigate mechanisms by which adaptive immune responses affect post-stroke plasticity, while concomitantly confirming and characterizing these cells in patients. Clinical studies focus on the role of neuroinflammation during brain injury and repair and have expanded beyond the field of ischemic stroke to include subjects with or are at-risk for dementia, as well as pediatric patients on ventilator and hemodynamic support who experience stroke. My work is currently funded by NIH (NINDS, NIA) and the Department of Defense. The combination of preclinical and clinical studies reflects both my own training and my ongoing scientific philosophy that translational research will hasten our understanding of functional recovery during and following brain injury.