Miratul Muqit
Dr Miratul Muqit is a Professor in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, University Dundee, and a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow. He studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and was a graduate student with Nicholas Wood at UCL Institute of Neurology where he contributed to the discovery of PINK1 mutations as a cause of Parkinson's. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2020.
Ken Nakamura, MD, PhD
Ken Nakamura, MD, PhD, is a neurobiologist with expertise in bioenergetics and a movement disorders neurologist. He has a long-standing interest in the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases, especially Parkinson’s disease. His laboratory at the Gladstone Institutes uses an array of imaging, cell engineering, and screening approaches to study the normal physiology of mitochondria and energy metabolism in the brain. His laboratory delineated new mechanisms of mitochondrial quality control in neurons, and led efforts to identify genes and pathways regulating energy levels, culminating in work defining the “ATPome.” This work has implications for cellular energy control mechanisms in diverse physiologic processes and human diseases. He aims to understand how disrupting mitochondrial functions and metabolism impacts the function and survival of susceptible neuronal populations, and to use these insights to develop new approaches to target energy metabolism therapeutically.
Alexandra Nelson, MD, PhD
Alexandra Nelson, MD, PhD, is a systems neuroscientist and movement disorders neurologist. Her research is focused on the cellular and circuit bases of motor control, and in particular how these go awry in the context of movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and dyskinesias. She is known for her expertise in ex vivo (slice) and in vivo electrophysiology, as well as her use of optogenetics and other cell type-specific tools. She has made contributions to our understanding of the cellular and circuit mechanisms of motor learning, as well as the function of basal ganglia microcircuits. In the context of disease, her laboratory has identified key basal ganglia physiological correlates of disease symptoms and effective therapies (such as dopamine replacement therapy and deep brain stimulation) in mouse models of Parkinson’s disease.
Sophie Oakley, PhD
Sophie is the interim project manager for Team Cragg. She studied her PhD exploring the optimisation of microfluidic devices for neural circuit modelling at Loughborough University and set up next generation sequencing at the UKHSA’s Rosalind Franklin Laboratory.
Jose Obeso, MD, PhD
José Obeso, MD, PhD, heads a highly active team devoted to stopping the progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD). He is a group leader at the Biomedical Research Networking Center on Neurodegenerative Diseases and also the director of Fundación HM Hospitales. He was editor in chief of the Movement Disorders journal (2010-2020) taking it to its highest historical performance (IF=10.33; 10th among all neurology titles). He occupies the Neurology Chair (#48) of the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain (2017). His current Hirsch index is 86 (ISI) and 108 (Google Scholar) out of more than 350 peer-reviewed papers on the pathophysiology of the basal ganglia, the role of the subthalamic nucleus, levodopa-related motor complications in PD. He had a major role in developing the concept of continuous dopaminergic stimulation and the revitalization of functional neurosurgery for PD in the 1990’s. His current interest is focused on understanding the factors leading to neuronal vulnerability in Parkinson’s disease, aiming to stop the progressive evolution of neurodegeneration.
Catherine Oikonomou, PhD
Catherine is a Project Manager in the labs of Drs. Viviana Gradinaru and Sarkis Mazmanian at Caltech. She received her PhD from the Rockefeller University, where she studied cell cycle control in budding yeast with Dr. Fred Cross. She then joined the lab of Dr. Grant Jensen at Caltech, exploring microbial cell biology with cryo-electron tomography. With Dr. Jensen, she co-authored an open-access multimedia textbook, the Atlas of Bacterial & Archaeal Cell Structure.
Loukia Parisiadou, PhD
Loukia Parisiadou, PhD, has focused her studies on the cellular and molecular pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease (PD). She completed her postdoctoral training in Dr. Andy Singleton’s laboratory at the National Institute on Aging. Loukia Parisiadou joined a few years after the laboratory showed that mutations in the LRRK2 gene cause PD. This sparked her scientific interest in determining the physiological functions of the coded protein in the mammalian brain and the molecular mechanism(s) through which disease-associated variants in the LRRK2 gene induce neuronal dysfunction. Over the last 14 years, her efforts to study the LRRK2 related PD provided novel insights into the undetermined role of LRRK2 kinase. It also led to the generation of several mouse models and conceptual advances of the molecular basis of PD. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the Parisiadou laboratory at Northwestern University studies the neuronal cell-type-specific dysfunctions in PD supported by the NINDS and The Michael J. Fox Foundation grants.
Sergiu Pasca, MD
Sergiu Pasca, MD, is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Bonnie Uytengsu and Family founding Director of Stanford Brain Organogenesis. A physician by training, Dr. Pasca is interested in understanding the rules governing human brain assembly and mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disease. Dr. Pasca developed some of the initial in-a-dish models of disease by deriving neurons from skin cells taken from patients with genetic neurodevelopmental disorders. His laboratory introduced the use of instructive signals for reproducibly deriving from stem cells self-organizing 3D cellular ensembles named brain region-specific organoids. He also pioneered a modular system to study human neuronal migration and the formation of functional circuits in preparations termed assembloids. Dr. Pasca's laboratory has systematically applied these advanced cellular models to gain novel insights into human physiology, evolution, and brain disease mechanisms, and supported researchers around the world in learning and implementing these techniques.
Suzanne Pfeffer, PhD
Suzanne Pfeffer is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine. She studied synaptic vesicle recycling as a graduate student with Regis Kelly at UCSF and membrane trafficking with James Rothman as a postdoc at Stanford. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), and Past President of ASCB and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Kira Poskanzer, PhD
Kira Poskanzer, PhD, is a neurobiologist studying astrocyte-neuron communication at the cellular and circuit levels. Her research employs optical and electrophysiological methods to ask which neural circuit signals activate astrocytes, and in turn, how astrocytes regulate large populations of neurons into specific oscillatory patterns. Her lab’s research focuses on astrocytic control of cortical circuits relevant for sleep and attention. In addition, to expand the toolkit for astrocyte physiologists, she has worked to develop computational and optochemical technologies specifically for astrocyte research.
Matthias Prigge, PhD
Matthias Prigge, PhD, is a trained biophysicist and biochemist who transitioned into system neuroscience during his postdoctoral work at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He has a well-established track record of engineering new optogenetic tools to dissect catecholaminergic circuits. His work focuses on optically manipulating neuronal circuits with light-gated ion channels to derive a better understanding of how we can use neuronal stimulation to re-configure dysfunctional catecholaminergic circuits. His optogenetic-inspired stimulation paradigms can pave the way to more efficient deep brain stimulation in patients. Dr. Prigge started his own research group at the Leibniz Institute for Neuroscience in Magdeburg, Germany in 2018. His lab has a particular interest in understanding the neuronal and molecular architecture of the locus coeruleus and substantia nigra in health and disease in mouse models. He investigates how early changes in the neuronal circuit of catecholaminergic neurons can alter psychophysical and behavioral parameters.
Karin Reinisch, PhD
Karin is David W. Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the Yale School of Medicine. She trained as a structural biologist at Harvard, as a graduate student with William N Lipscomb and a post-doc with Stephen C. Harrison.
Timothy Ryan, PhD
Tim is a Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering/Cornell Tri-Institutional Professor in the department of Biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He did his undergraduate studies in Physics at McGill University in Montreal Canada, and completed his PhD in the laboratory of Watt Webb in the department of Physics at Cornell University in Ithaca NY. He switched into cellular & molecular neuroscience as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Stephen J Smith at Stanford university where he pioneered the use of quantitative optical methods to study synaptic vesicle recycling. He subsequently established his own independent lab at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City where he continues to develop and deploy novel quantitative optical tools to unravel the molecular machinery of nerve terminals. In 2018 he became a visiting Senior Scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Research Campus where he collaborates with a number of groups.
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.
Ashley Seifert, PhD
Ashley Seifert, MSc, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Kentucky. His research uses a multi-species approach to identify cellular and molecular features that direct injured tissue to naturally regenerate. Among these species, his lab has developed spiny mice as a model to study complex tissue regeneration and discover cytoprotective mechanisms that protect tissues and organs from fibrosis. His work has uncovered novel, stress-resistant mechanisms in adult fibroblasts and highlighted how macrophage populations direct regenerative healing. Dr. Seifert earned an AB in biology from Bowdoin College, an MSc from the University of Florida (UF) studying air-breathing physiology in lungfish, and his PhD in Professor Cohn’s lab at UF studying anogenital development in mammals. He completed postdoctoral training in regenerative biology with Professor Maden before starting his own lab at the University of Kentucky in 2013. Dr. Seifert has been a visiting professor at the University of Nairobi since 2010.
Yoland Smith, PhD
Yoland Smith, PhD, received a PhD degree from Laval University (Quebec, Canada) in 1988. After postdoctoral training at Oxford University (Oxford, England) and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), he was appointed Assistant Professor of Anatomy at Laval University in 1991. In 1996, he joined the faculty of Emory University (Atlanta, GA), where he is currently Professor and Vice-Chair of Faculty Development in Neurology, and Chief of the Division of Neuropharmacology and Neurological Disorders at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. His research has been continuously funded by the NIH. He is a member of Emory’s Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research and has published over 250 manuscripts on the pathophysiology of parkinsonism and related disorders. He is a Senior Editor of the European Journal of Neuroscience. He is also principal investigator of the NIH T32 Training grant that supports the Emory’s Graduate Program in Neuroscience.
Scott Soderling, PhD
Scott Soderling, PhD, is a George Barth Geller Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology and Professor of Cell Biology and Neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine. He is an expert in molecular mechanisms of neuronal cell biology and dysfunction linked to human brain disorders. His lab has pioneered applications of innovative proteomics and genome engineering approaches to reveal cell-type-specific protein machinery that governs synaptic transmission in vivo. His lab has also analyzed synaptopathy in new mouse models of intellectual disability, neurodegeneration, schizophrenia-related disorders, and epilepsy/aphasia. These studies have focused on altered synaptic function underlying neuronal circuits that drive abnormal behavior. Dr. Soderling received his PhD from the University of Washington and completed his postdoctoral training at the Vollum Institute. He joined the faculty of Cell Biology at Duke in 2005 and was promoted to full Professor in 2017. In 2019, he became Chair of the Department of Cell Biology.
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.
Michael Tadross, MD, PhD
Michael Tadross, MD., PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurobiology at Duke University, where he develops genetically encoded technologies to target clinically relevant drugs to specific cell types in the brain. His lab applies these methods to mouse models of neuropsychiatric disease to determine which brain cell types are responsible for beneficial versus harmful effects, providing a roadmap for development of targeted therapeutics. He received a BS in electrical and computer engineering with a minor in chemistry at Rutgers, an MD/Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins,; postdoctoral training in cellular neuroscience at Stanford, and began independent research as a fellow at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus.
David Van Valen, MD, PhD
David Van Valen, MD, PhD, is a faculty member in the Division of Biology and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology. His research group’s long-term interest is to develop a quantitative understanding of how living systems process, store, and transfer information, and to unravel how this information processing is perturbed in human disease states. To that end, his group leverages — and pioneers — the latest advances in imaging, genomics, and machine learning to produce quantitative measurements with single-cell resolution as well as predictive models of living systems. Dr. Van Valen’s academic training and research experiences have been at the interfaces of several fields. He studied mathematics and physics as an undergraduate at MIT (graduated 2003), biophysics at Caltech (graduated 2011), and medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (graduated 2013). He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, where he trained in systems biology, machine learning, bioinformatics, and single-cell genomics, prior to rejoining Caltech as faculty in 2018.
