In June 2017, Nicole Werner, an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was accepted as one of four KL2 scholars under the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research KL2 program, funded by the National Institutes of Health through a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). The KL2 career development program is intended to train and support junior faculty who are actively engaged in translational research and committed to developing an independent research program.
Werner’s cross-college mentoring team for this career development award includes Pascale Carayon, the Procter & Gamble Bascom Professor in Total Quality in industrial and systems engineering; Amy Kind and Carey Gleason, associate professors of geriatrics and gerontology at the School of Medicine and Public Health and the VA Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Centers; and Barbara Bowers at the School of Nursing.
Werner’s research will focus on web-based technology providing tailored support to the more than 15 million informal (nonprofessional and unpaid) caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias. These caregivers invest an estimated 17 billion hours of care per year and often experience isolation, burden, depression, stress, and reduced quality of life. Most of them provide care without the information they need to contend with the cognitive, behavioral, and physical changes that occur with disease progression. The goal of Werner’s new technology is to prevent dementia patients from being institutionalized because their informal caregivers become overburdened.