Fang Yu

Fang Yu works as an Assistant Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. She received her Baccalaureate degree with a major in nursing from Beijing Medical University (now Peking University) in China and obtained her M.A. degree as a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner in 2002 and the Ph.D. degree in gerontological nursing in 2003 from the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded the John A. Hartford Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2004. Since the beginning of her graduate education, she had worked in a variety of clinical settings as a Staff Nurse, as a Clinical Educator, and as Supervisor in hospitals and a nursing home, which helped her to recognize the clinical importance of functional independence in older adults, particularly in those with dementia. Her program of research, thus, focuses on developing nonpharmacological interventions for improving cognition and function in older adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Her dissertation study showed that older adults with cognitive impairment were able to achieve significant and comparable functional gain to those with intact cognition from a comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation program. Her postdoctoral work further suggested that the exercise component of rehabilitation, particularly aerobic exercise, might account for her dissertation findings and be robust for improving cognition and function in older adults with AD. She has subsequently obtained several grants to develop an aerobic exercise training program for older adults with AD, including the American Nurses Foundation research grant in 2005, the NIH K12 Career Advancement Award in 2007, the American Health Assistance Foundation Grant in 2009, and the University of Minnesota AHC Seed Grant in 2009. Please visit her webpage for other details including a list of her publications http://www.nursing.umn.edu/FacultyandStaff/YuFang/home.html

Biography Updated on 5 January 2011

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