The Center on Aging at the University of Vermont has announced that a project proposal by Julie Dumas, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry, and Mary Kay Davignon Green and Gold Professor of Pediatrics C. Lawrence Kien, M.D., has been recognized with the 2014 Armin Grams Memorial Research Award.

This annual award funds pilot research programs with the overall goal of increasing funded research on aging at the university. Dumas and Kien’s pilot research project is titled “Dietary Saturated and Monounsaturated Fatty Acids and Cognition.”

Armin Grams came to UVM in 1970 to establish the Human Development and Family Studies Program. Grams developed and taught several courses on gerontology and was instrumental in establishing the UVM Center for the Study of Aging. He retired from UVM in 1990 and passed away in 2002.

A Center for the Study of Aging was established at UVM in 1992 by action of the Board of Trustees. In 2008, Lois McClure announced her endowment of the newly named Center on Aging through a gift of $5 million. The mission of the Center on Aging is to forge an ongoing collaboration among faculty, students, staff and programs within UVM, Fletcher Allen Health Care, and the Vermont community to promote a sense of wellbeing and a high quality of life for older adults.