“If you like delayed gratification, research is for you,” says Health, Brain & Cognition Lab Manager and BETTER Study Coordinator Chris Oehler. “There’s a lot of external, behind the scenes stuff before you can get to the cool stuff.”

 “The cool stuff” for Chris is analyzing research data “to answer the questions we intend to answer.” Arriving at that point can take years, he says. The lab’s Brain EXTEND study, looking at the effect of six months of exercise training on cognitive performance in healthy adults, for example, was underway when he came on board in 2018. He’s been gathering and prepping data ever since and didn’t get his name on a paper about the study until this past summer. 

But research is not all delayed gratification, he says. “It does feel good when you meet your targets and you get to milestones.”

“Chris is a true hub in the lab, he keeps us moving forward. He connects our big ideas to the leadership, teamwork, and learning it takes to make ideas come to life in our science and mentoring. It has been really fun to see his leadership and skills grow, and with that growth comes more positive impact through a growing sphere of interactions with lab members, participants, and colleagues here at Iowa and other organizations.”

— Lab Director Michelle Voss

Phase IIB of the lab’s BETTER (Brain Enhancement Training Towards Elders Resilience) to Aging study is one of those milestones. A follow-up to BETTER Phase II, which assessed performance outcomes immediately after computer brain training and 6 months after the end of training, Phase IIB examines the longer-term benefits of the training program’s ability to improve cognitive and functional performance, as well as brain structure and function.

Chris has also been a key player in the design and launch of the lab’s newest study, BOOST PA, formally named “Targeting Cognitive Control to Improve Physical Activity Adherence in Midlife for Alzheimer’s Risk Reduction.”

Research was the draw

“A small-town kid,” Chris grew up in the Amana Colonies, graduated high school from Clear Creek-Amana and enrolled at Kirkwood Community College, where he discovered his interest in psychology. “Research studies is what drew me to it — learning about the findings and how they figured things out, what they did, how the studies were designed, how they found out what they did,” he says.

He transferred to the University of Iowa, completing his Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology in 2010. “By then, I knew I wanted to get into research and had to get to grad school. But I needed experience working as an undergrad.”

In his junior and senior years, “I got a little bit of everything,” Chris says. He worked with pigeons in Professor Ed Wasserman’s studies of animal cognition and perception, tested undergrads’ reaction times in Professor J. Toby Mordkoff’s human information processing and visual attention studies, and ran rat studies in Professor John Freeman’s Neuroscience of Learning Lab.

After graduation, Chris split his time between Hy-Vee and the Wasserman Lab as he rounded up recommendation letters for graduate school. He earned his Master of Science in Experimental Psychology in 2016 at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. His thesis project, a social psychology experiment about beliefs, gave him writing experience to add to his lab research background.

He returned to Iowa in 2015, starting full-time in Professor Teresa Treat’s Clinical-Cognitive Science Lab coordinating a study of the impact of alcohol on men’s perceptions of women’s sexual interest.

He joined the Health, Brain & Cognition Lab in 2018. His three job titles, “Lab Manager,” “Clinical Trial and Data Management Research Associate,” and “BETTER Study Project Manager,” suggest the wide range of duties he now juggles to keep research projects on track.

On any given day, his activities could range from fielding study participant inquiries to processing vendor invoices to onboarding new lab team members. On another, he may communicate with lab research partners in Dallas or Boston, manage compliance with human subject protection regulations or purchase a mailing list for new recruitment postcards.

Compliance with Internal Review Board (IRB) regulations, which govern human research subject studies, is a top priority. “A lot of it is updating the IRBs when we modify anything like adding team members or changing procedures,” he says. In addition to the Hawk IRB Human Subjects Office based on campus, the lab also submits some modifications for review to an external IRB as well.  

“I make sure we explain what we’re going to do clearly enough and that it’s approved in a timely manner. I also submit yearly progress reports. It keeps the wheels turning,” he says.

“Chris is a true hub in the lab, he keeps us moving forward. He connects our big ideas to the leadership, teamwork, and learning it takes to make ideas come to life in our science and mentoring,” says Lab Director Michelle Voss. “It has been really fun to see his leadership and skills grow, and with that growth comes more positive impact through a growing sphere of interactions with lab members, participants, and colleagues here at Iowa and other organizations.”

Direct contact with study participants is one of Chris’s favorite parts of the job. “I recognize people and they recognize me,” Chris says. People in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and the Quad Cities especially enjoy getting involved in research studies, he says. “They seem to really want to help out. In the age group we have, people really want to participate."

A series of 'firsts'

He’s seen the lab notch several firsts during his tenure. One of those is recruiting earlier study participants for the next phase of BETTER Aging. “Phase IIB is everyone from Phase 2 plus a new sample. To my knowledge, it’s the first time we have actually brought people back. We’re looking to see what the residual benefits remain from brain training five years ago,” he says.

“Also, we’ll compare groups from five years ago to see if there’s a difference from those who did casual games vs. adaptive games. Since they do brain training again, we’ll see if they get a boost.”

The BOOST study breaks ground in two other ways. “It’s the first time our lab has been the coordinating site for a study in which we’re managing another site for a large intervention trial,” Chris says. The HBC Lab is partnering with Northeastern University in Boston and Posit Science, a San Francisco-based developer of BrainHQ computer-based training exercises. The study also combines cognitive and exercise training, a new approach for the lab.

Chris is also excited about the University of Iowa’s research hub on 1^st Avenue in Cedar Rapids that opened this year. “We have a satellite site in a more diverse area. It’s nice to have that hub close to downtown,” he says.

Chris makes his home in Cedar Rapids with his wife, Sasha, who owns a clothing resale business. The couple enjoy caring for their dog and two rabbits, along with gardening, yard work and home renovation projects. “We like to learn how to do new things.”

Whether figuring out how to tackle home flooring, trim and drywall projects, or designing and administering research studies for the lab, Chris says he’s motivated by questions: “What am I going to learn today? What are other people in the lab going to discover from their work? It’s always about learning new things.”