CARES Award Recipient

Sarah Ocañas

Sarah Ocañas, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Genes and Human Disease Research Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Departments of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC). Ocañas was awarded the 2022 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award and recently started her own research group. The Ocañas lab is working to uncover the genomic and hormonal drivers of sex differences in the aging brain and with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), with the ultimate goal of developing sex-informed therapeutics for AD. Ocañas earned her doctorate at the OUHSC for her NRSA-F31 dissertation project, “Epigenetic regulation of sexually divergent neuroinflammation with brain aging and AD.” Before her doctorate, Ocañas completed her bachelor's of science in Biology and Mathematics at the State University of New York Geneseo and her master's of science in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Brownsville, focusing on computational molecular biology. 

Use of award: Cover caregiving expenses to attend three conferences as an invited speaker, such as the American Aging Association annual scientific meeting, the 16th International Symposium on Neurobiology and Neuroendocrinology of Aging, and the FASEB Science Research Conference on Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Brain Aging.

Sarah Ocañas is a member of American Aging Association, a FASEB member society.