Johnson Agniswamy, PhD
Johnson Agniswamy is the project manager for team Wichmann. He is part of the Emory Primate Center, NND-Neuroscience, Emory University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Madras. In his previous employments, he worked at Georgia State University, focusing on structural studies on HIV drug resistance and the structure-based drug design of HIV protease. As part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, he has researched structural studies on human immune system evasion by flesh-eating bacteria.
Cláudia Mendes, PhD
Cláudia is a Project Manager at the Cragg Group based in the University of Oxford. During her doctoral studies, supervised by Christen Mirth and Élio Sucena at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Portugal, Cláudia explored how growth and differentiation during ovary development are modified by larval nutrition in the fruit fly. She later moved to the UK to conduct her first postdoctoral research project with Alistair McGregor and Daniela Nunes in Oxford Brookes University, where she investigated the genetic mechanisms underlying variation in the size and shape of the external male genitalia between two closely related fly species. Cláudia then became interested in how tissues and organs lose the ability to control their growth, which is one of the hallmarks of tumour initiation and progression. She conducted her second and final postdoctoral research project in the Wilson Group at the University of Oxford. She is now keen to have a successful career in project management.
Andreea Bostan, PhD
Andreea is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the Systems Neuroscience Center at the University of Pittsburgh. A graduate of the University of Toronto, she received her doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh. Andreea has used neurotropic viruses as transneuronal tracers to establish that the cerebellum and basal ganglia are interconnected and form an integrated network with the cerebral cortex. She is particularly interested in how changes in the integrated network, which links the cerebellum with the basal ganglia and the cerebral cortex, contribute to the manifestation of neurologic and psychiatric disorders.
Amanda Schneeweis, PhD
Amanda is the program manager for Team Awatramani! Her background is in Alzheimer's disease research but is very excited to contribute to the PD field! Amanda is based in Chicago, IL.
James Surmeier, PhD
D. James Surmeier, PhD, is the Nathan Smith Davis Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. He studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Idaho and received his PhD in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington. He pioneered the use of advanced electrophysiological, optical, and molecular approaches to unravel the roles of dopamine and acetylcholine in modulating the striatal circuitry implicated in Parkinson’s disease. These studies have yielded fundamental insights into how striatal circuits adapt to the disease and how they contribute to side-effects of symptomatic treatment. In addition, Dr. Surmeier’s group has made a significant contribution to our understanding of how the physiology of dopaminergic neurons leads to the mitochondrial oxidant stress implicated in Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis. These studies have served as a foundation for large-scale clinical trials aimed at slowing Parkinson’s disease progression.
Julianna Tomlinson, PhD
Upon completion of her PhD in Biochemistry (uOttawa), Julianna joined Dr. Michael Schlossmacher’s team to focus on PD related topics. She has created a mouse model to study the interaction between mutant Gba1 and SNCA in vivo (manuscript is in preparation). In parallel efforts, Julianna and colleagues refined a method for the visualization of the olfactory system in mice. This publication highlights the abundance of a-synuclein within the olfactory epithelium and also showed that Snca protects mice against nasal inoculation with a neurotropic virus and lessens the bacterial load in sepsis (Tomlinson et al., JNT 2017). Julianna has been supported as co-PI on grants from the MJFF, Weston Brain Institute and the Canadian Institute of Health Research. In her current role as Sr. Research Associate and Scientific Project Manager in the Schlossmacher team, she contributes to project conception, design and implementation, to overseeing graduate students and is leading scientific projects.
Thomas Wichmann, MD
Thomas Wichmann, MD, received medical training at the Universities of Münster and Freiburg (Germany), graduating in 1984, with subsequent postdoctoral research training at the University of Freiburg and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), and neurology residency training at Emory University (Atlanta, GA). He has been a faculty member at Emory University since 1996, specializing in research into the pathophysiology of parkinsonism and the clinical care of patients with Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. He is currently the A. Worley Brown Professor of Neurology, Associate Director of the Movement Disorder division in Neurology, and Associate Director for Scientific Programs at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. His research has been continuously NIH funded, and has been published in high-impact journals. Dr. Wichmann also leads Emory’s NINDS-funded Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research, and the American Parkinson’s Disease Association’s Center for Advanced Research at Emory University.
Chuyu Chen, PhD
Chuyu is a postdoc fellow in the department of Pharmacology, Northwestern University. She studied the pathologic mechanism of LRRK2 by generating a disease model as a graduate student. After joining Parisiadou's lab, she is devoted to studying cell type specific LRRK2 dysfunction.
