Dr. Lester and Mary Ann Sauvage Endowed Professorship in Nursing

Mo-Kyung Sin, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA

Dr. Mo-Kyung Sin is a nursing professor at Seattle University. Since joining SU in 2004, Dr. Sin has consistently pursued her research into the influence of cardiovascular disease on the development of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. 

Her early experiences as a cardiac nurse working in telemetry and with heart transplant patients on an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), informed the direction of her future research. In her doctoral dissertation, she explored behavioral management of diet and exercise on cardiac rehabilitation participants. Then went on to research cardiac health promotion among elderly Korean immigrants. In time her research evolved to include the heart and brain connection, especially Alzheimer’s and Parkinson disease.

In 2019, Dr. Sin was selected for the distinguished Edmond J. Safra Visiting Nurse Faculty Program at the Parkinson’s Foundation and received the program’s 2021 Alumni Award for her outstanding contribution in educating others and nursing students on Parkinson disease.

A strong advocate for student success, Dr. Sin has mentored both nursing students and alumni through the Parkinson Disease Nursing Student Ambassador Program, which she implemented in 2020 with funding from the Parkinson’s Foundation. She expanded the current program in 2021 to the Alzheimer Disease and Parkinson Disease Ambassador Program with a seed grant from the College of Nursing. The ambassador programs were designed to provide nursing students with necessary knowledge and competency when caring for patients with Alzheimer disease and/ or Parkinson disease and evidence-based practice skills through case-study manuscript development.

She currently has two National Institutes of Health (NIH)/ National Institute on Aging (NIA) funded grants to pursue her research on blood pressure, cerebral vasculopathies (arteriolosclerosis, cerebral amyloid angiopathy), cerebral microinfarcts and dementia. Dr. Sin is the first awardee of two NIH grants as a lead investigator at the College of Nursing.

Dr. Sin is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN) and Gerontological Society of America (FGSA). She is a current vice-chair of the GSA’s Health Sciences Section, with plans to become chair in 2025. She was recognized recently for her contributions to cardiac health with an invitation from the Journal of Clinical Medicine to be a guest editor for its special issue on "New and Emerging Concepts in Hypertension and Cognition in Older Adults." She also serves as an NIH grant reviewer and editorial board member of Asian Nursing Research, the official peer-reviewed research journal of the Korean Society of Nursing Science.