- Email:
- pbylund@regenstrief.org
I am an Iowa farm girl first-generation college graduate. While my degrees (BS, MS, PHD) are in Plant Pathology, my career has diverted down many different avenues. For more than 25 years I focused on applied field research (management of plant diseases in corn and soybeans), teaching and service. I have been a coordinator of a ten-state research project, the Director of the Plant & Pest Diagnostic Lab at Purdue University and led the Master Gardener Program, an organization of more than 3,000 volunteers. My career then diverted to social work, where I worked with adult mentors and their youth mentees, focusing specifically on youth involved with the judiciary system. After a few years of work in administration, I moved into the healthcare field as research coordinator at Regenstrief Institute working with Dr. Boustani. Currently, I’m working on the DANE study where we are focusing on patients >65 that have had major surgery and experienced some form of delirium while in the hospital. We are studying how to help with their complex recovery, both physically and mentally, using the collaborative care model. My passion is to improve the healthcare system by providing leadership to research studies related to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease because I do not want my daughter or grandsons to experience the devastation that can occur to families while caring for relatives with Alzheimer’s.