Professor Receives Soaring Eagle Award.
Kimberly Sullivan (MED’99), research assistant professor of environmental health, has received the 2019 Soaring Eagle Award from the Boston University Center for Military Health.
The center’s Strategic Advisory Board presents the annual award to an individual who has made significant contributions to the health of United States veterans and active duty military members through innovation and advances in clinical care, research, education or public advocacy. Sullivan was selected as this year’s recipient in recognition of her dedication to understanding and improving health outcomes of Gulf War veterans through decades of outstanding research on various aspects of Gulf War Illness (GWI).
“I am honored to receive this award on behalf of all veterans with Gulf War Illness, and I hope it raises awareness of the military toxic wounds that so many of our veterans suffer from,” says Sullivan.
Sullivan served as the associate scientific director for the congressionally directed VA Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses (RAC-GWVI) from 2008-2015 and co-chaired the joint VA/DOD Common Data Elements Working Group for GWI in 2018. She currently serves on multiple VA executive advisory committees for GWI research.
“It’s our responsibility to take care of our veterans who went to war and came back sick,” she says. “It’s so important to recognize their service, validate their illness, and to get them the help they need.”
A behavioral neuroscientist, Sullivan says her research is focused on “better understanding these deployment-related toxic wounds and on identifying treatments for our ailing veterans.” She currently leads two large multi-site consortia studies for GWI research funded by the Department of Defense. She is principal investigator and director of the Boston Gulf War Illness Consortium (GWIC) which includes nine study sites and was designed to determine the pathobiology of GWI. Through the GWIC studies, Sullivan and her team have identified multiple key new avenues for diagnostic markers and treatments for GWI.
Sullivan also serves as PI and leads the large 10-site Boston Biorepository and Integrative Network (BBRAIN) for GWI, which was designed to share biospecimens and foster collaboration within the GWI research community.
Working in the field of behavioral neurotoxicology since the mid-1990s, Sullivan has coordinated multiple studies focused on chronic health effects, from neurotoxicant exposures from military deployments and their neurobehavioral and neuroimaging outcomes as well as gender-based outcomes in military veterans and predisposition and risks for development of neurodegenerative diseases.