Blue Harbor Foundation Supports Mood Disorders Research

The Maryland-based Blue Harbor Foundation concentrates all its resources on neuroscience research. It identifies and funds promising clinical studies with the potential to advance diagnosis and treatment of mood disorders. Toward that end, the foundation recently provided a $100,000 gift to support pediatric bipolar research conducted by Mani Pavuluri, MD, PhD. 

“We chose to fund Dr. Pavuluri’s work because she is a nationally recognized expert in the field of mood disorders and because her research is making a direct impact on the lives of children today,” said Michael Heckman, executive director of Blue Harbor Foundation.

Pavuluri, who works in the Institute for Juvenile Research and the Center for Cognitive Medicine in the department of psychiatry at UIC, uses functional magnetic neuroimaging to observe brain function. “We examine the changing blood flow in the living brain in response to the stimuli or tasks that we ask the bipolar children to perform,” said Pavuluri.

“The research going on at UIC is so inspiring to people who before had no hope,” said Heckman. “UIC's  College of Medicine has talented researchers and the collaborative spirit is extraordinary—it is unique nationally and globally.

“The cross collaboration is so important to us,” adds Heckman. “Sharing and collaborating is how we’re going to progress. Too much research work is done in isolation.  I don’t know how UIC did it, but they managed to get amazing minds and created a platform for them to work together across disciplines, and that’s what we want to fund.

“I couldn’t be happier with the performance of Dr. Pavuluri and her entire team in every dollar that we give them.”