It’s no simple feat to find a better way to detect neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and Alzheimer’s, Lauren Fields knows. But with support from a 2026 Schmidt Science Fellowship, Fields will build on the research she conducted and skills she learned as a PhD student at UW–Madison to look for a way to tell when patients have early signs of ALS and other diseases.
Her work could revolutionize medicine and pave the way for other researchers to identify therapeutics that could change the course of neurodegenerative disease progression.
As a PhD student at UW–Madison working with professor Lingjun Li, Fields investigated better strategies to detect neuropeptides, the chemical messengers that neurons secrete. Neuropeptides travel throughout the body and send signals that dictate things like whether to feel full or hungry. Looking at neuropeptides in blood or spinal fluid provides a picture of what’s happening neurologically without requiring brain surgery, Fields said.
She studied satiety factors, those cues of fullness or hunger, in crabs to get to know the neuroscience and chemistry behind the process. She learned how to program and developed software packages to look at neuropeptides. Fields earned her PhD in Chemistry from UW–Madison in December 2025.
Now a postdoc at the University of Washington, Fields is well-poised to take the next step in this work, pivoting from chemistry into proteomics and genomics. As a Schmidt Science Fellow, she will use advanced mass spectrometry techniques to analyze blood and spinal fluid samples from patients to find earlier ways that doctors can diagnose ALS. She will incorporate those analyses into a machine learning model to try and connect the chemistry behind ALS to environmental factors that might predispose someone to the disease, which is fatal and currently has no treatment.
It’s exactly the kind of pivot that makes Fields a perfect match for the Schmidt Science Fellowship.
“Schmidt is really unique in that they seek out people who are going to perform high risk, high reward science, and that’s not something you typically see in a fellowship or grant,” Fields said. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to really try something big.”
If successful, Fields’ project would allow doctors to check for the signature proteins of ALS from a routine blood test on a patient — decades before the initial symptoms of the disease appear.
“That also paves the way for other researchers to find therapeutics that could alter the trajectory of the disease. But of course, in order to alter the trajectory, we need to know that it’s happening,” Fields said. “This research definitely has the opportunity to revolutionize how we approach treatments for neurodegeneration.”
Fields has always been interested in understanding neurodegenerative diseases. As an undergraduate, she took a class about them around the same time that the Ice Bucket Challenge raised awareness about the need for ALS research. She thought neurodegenerative diseases were understudied and found them interesting from a chemical perspective — but also scary.
After her postdoc, Fields hopes to start her own research lab looking at the underlying factors of neurological diseases. As technological advances allow researchers to discover more biomarkers of disease and support more personalized medicine, Fields aims to ensure that the science behind medical treatments includes communities that have been overlooked in the past.
Fields said she received tremendous support for her research at UW–Madison through the Department of Chemistry, the School of Pharmacy, her advisor Dr. Li, and the many collaborations she had across campus.
“UW–Madison’s been instrumental in my scientific growth and really supporting my scientific curiosity,” she said. “I’m very proud to be a Badger.”