Lloyd Prize for Innovative Health Research

Eligibility: Full-time University faculty members, employees, post-doctoral scholars, and fellows, and/or full-time graduate students or medical students enrolled at the University.
Financial support range: based on the available endowment income

We seek proposals for novel research focused on important health issues facing mankind. The Lloyd Prize is funded by an endowment established by Dr. Tom Lloyd who served on the faculty of the College of Medicine for 46 years.

Eligibility: Full-time University faculty members, employees, post-doctoral scholars, and fellows, and/or full-time graduate students or nursing students enrolled at the University. This competitive prize rotates through the following colleges at the University, with the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing taking place in 2025. Subsequent years will be the College of Health and Human Development, Eberly College of Science, College of Engineering, College of Information Sciences and Technology, College of the Liberal Arts, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and College of Medicine. The recipient of the award must plan to be employed/enrolled at Penn State for the duration of the research project.

Funding: The selected recipient will receive a prize based on the available endowment income. Sixty percent (60%) of the available funds can be provided either through payroll or placed in a protected research account. An additional thirty percent (30%) of available endowment income will be placed in a protected research account.

The Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) is thrilled to announce Jennifer Kowalkowski is the winner of the 2025 Lloyd Prize for Innovative Health Research.

2025 Loyd Prize for Innovative Health Research - Jennifer Kowalkowski

Kowalkowski is an assistant professor of nursing at the Penn State Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing. She is also an affiliate faculty member with the Tressa Nese and Helen Diskevich Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, the Population Research Institute, and the Rock Ethics Institute. Her project, “Developing a Conceptual Model to Describe How Farmers Experience Occupational Stress”, will build on her previous work of addressing mental health and well-being among rural and agricultural populations. Read more here .

2024 Loyd Prize for Innovative Health Research - Guodong Liu

Liu is a professor of public health sciences in the division of health services and behavioral research with joint appointments as professor of neurology, pediatrics, psychiatry and behavioral health at the Penn State College of Medicine. He is also the director of the Center for Applied Studies in Health Economics (CASHE). His project "Psychometric Assessments via an AI-Powered Conversational Journal: Transforming Measurement-Based Care for Mood and Anxiety Disorders" aims to develop a framework of continuous mental health assessment that leverages generative artificial intelligence (AI) to collect and derive patients' mental health status more frequently and conveniently than traditional methods. Read more here .