Dr. Samantha Snyder, Ph.D. ’25, has always been interested in human movement. With a freshly minted doctorate in kinesiology from the School of Public Health, Snyder is wasting no time, already applying her diverse skills to make a difference for people with knee osteoarthritis, a common and painful condition. 

Watch Kiersten Janjigian discussing her basketball experiment on the School of Public Health's Instagram page.

After a dreary winter—and brutal flu and cold season—most of us are welcoming a new kind of affliction: spring fever. Coma-like weeks on the couch, whether brought on by a super virus or the new season of “Vanderpump Rules,” may have you itching to resuscitate your fitness routine—or reluctant to emerge from hibernation.

At 79, Ed Vilade has a jammed social calendar. Between his choir practice (he’s in two), voice lessons, community theater and overseeing the writer’s guild at his Silver Spring, Md., retirement community, Vilade’s brain was getting a regular workout, critical, he thought, to staying sharp as he aged.

But what wasn’t in shape was his body. So, three years ago, Vilade joined a clinical trial at the University of Maryland’s Exercise for Brain Lab, which used MRI and other diagnostic tools to study how physical exertion affects the neural networks that control memory and cognition.

Prior, associate professor and associate chair for research in the Department of Kinesiology, will receive $150,000 to fund his research on how exercise impacts vascular and functional impairment in older adults.

Totalling $75,000, the funding program is designed to support collaborative, multidisciplinary public health research that enriches lives. Research topics includes racism, mental health and mucosal immunity.

Published this month in the Journal for Alzheimer’s Disease Reports, the study examined the brains and story recollection abilities of older adults with normal brain function and those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, which is a slight decline in mental abilities like memory, reasoning and judgment and a risk factor for Alzheimer’s.

The University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the School of Public Health announced today the awardees of their inaugural Healthy Places Seed Grants - a funding program designed to spark innovative research around the challenges of building healthy, equitable communities. Eight projects received grants through the program.

The University of Maryland-led center will generate nature-based research, honor communities historically disenfranchised from nature and use programs to advocate the restorative benefits of nature.

Faculty from the School of Public Health will receive unprecedented funding to tackle some of society's biggest challenges, including a $3M grant to create an international alliance focused on alleviating food, energy and water insecurity, protecting environmental and global public health and bolstering community resilience in a changing climate.