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.
Silvia Arber, PhD
Silvia Arber, PhD, is a Professor and Senior Group Leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) and the Biozentrum of the University of Basel in Switzerland. She graduated from the University of Basel and performed her postdoctoral work at Columbia University in New York, before returning to Basel in 2000 to establish her independent research group. Dr. Arber’s laboratory is interested in understanding the principles by which neuronal circuits orchestrate accurate and timely control of movement. Using multi-facetted approaches combining many technologies, they study nervous-system-wide neuronal circuits involved in motor control, including how brain circuits interact with executive spinal circuits to produce body movements. Recent work has focused on the motor brainstem to unravel the identity of circuits at the intersection between planning and execution. The work also aims to discover mechanisms involved in circuit plasticity during motor learning and in response to disease or injury.
Benjamin Arenkiel, PhD
Benjamin Arenkiel, PhD, is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He obtained his PhD in genetics at the University of Utah in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Capecchi, and furthered his training in the laboratory of Dr. Lawrence Katz as a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University. The overarching goal of his research is to investigate how brain circuits are established, maintained, and function in the central nervous system, with a particular focus on the olfactory system. To this end, his team undertakes multifaceted experimentation that utilizes viral circuit tracing, optogenetic and chemical genetic activity manipulations, imaging, electrophysiology, sequencing, and genetic engineering methods in the mouse. In addition to running an innovative and successful research program, Dr. Arenkiel is also dedicated to providing a strong training environment to future scientists.
Rajeshwar Awatramani, PhD
Rajeshwar Awatramani, PhD, is a Professor of Neurology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. The focus of his research has been the development and diversity of dopamine (DA) neurons. His lab has described the floor plate origin of DA neurons and is continuing to explore how floor plate progenitors are subdivided to give rise to the diverse adult midbrain DA neuron system. His lab also focuses on understanding DA neuron diversity. Using single cell profiling, his lab revealed the presence of putative DA neuron subtypes. To decipher the functional basis of DA neuron heterogeneity, Dr. Awatramani has developed a powerful set of intersectional genetic tools to access DA neuron subtypes and has found anatomical and functional heterogeneity even within a single anatomical cluster like the substantia nigra.
Dylan Barbera, PhD
Dylan is currently a Project Manager for the Kaplitt team at Weill Cornell Medicine. Prior to this role, Dylan completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. Dylan worked primarily in the visual system seeking to elucidate the mechanisms underlying computation in the early sensory cortex. During this time, Dylan developed a data-driven feedforward model of masking in the mouse visual system. After completing his Ph.D., Dylan briefly worked as a consultant for early-stage biotechnology companies.
Mark Bevan, PhD
Mark Bevan, PhD, is a Professor of Neuroscience at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. His research focuses on the basal ganglia and their dysregulation in psychomotor disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. His laboratory utilizes a range of molecular, electrophysiological, optogenetic, chemogenetic, and imaging approaches. In recent years, his research team has contributed to our understanding of dopaminergic modulation mechanisms and circuit consequences of dopamine loss in Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Bevan received his PhD from the University of Manchester and undertook postdoctoral training at the University of Oxford and the University of Tennessee, supported in part by an Advanced Training Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust. In 2012, Dr. Bevan received a Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from NIH-NINDS, and in 2016 and 2018 he co-chaired the Basal Ganglia Gordon Research Conference. Dr. Bevan also directs an NIH-NINDS-funded training program in motor control mechanisms in health and disease.
Thomas Biederer, PhD
Thomas Biederer, PhD, received his PhD from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and performed postdoctoral training in molecular neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He started his laboratory in 2003 at Yale University, spent 2013-2019 at the Tufts University School of Medicine, and joined the Yale faculty in 2019 as a member of the Department of Neurology. The multidisciplinary research in the Biederer group focuses on the biology of synapses, the cellular structures that connect neurons into networks. His laboratory has revealed that protein complexes spanning pre- and post-synaptic sites control synapse formation and maintenance and shape these intricate cellular structures. The long-term goals of his group are to mechanistically define synapse assembly and the specification of neuronal connectivity and to investigate the profound relevance of synaptic aberrations for human health, including in Parkinson’s disease.
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.
Nicole Calakos, MD, PhD
Nicole Calakos, MD, PhD, is the Lincoln Financial Group Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology and Chief of the Movement Disorders section in Neurology at Duke University. Dr. Calakos is a physician-scientist who cares for people with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. Her laboratory studies plasticity mechanisms of the basal ganglia circuitry. Her lab has pioneered methodologies to monitor basal ganglia activity and used them to reveal mechanisms for habit learning, compulsive behavior, and the movement disorder, dystonia. Dr. Calakos received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, completed residency training in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, and joined Duke as an Assistant Professor in 2005 after completing postdoctoral training at Stanford with Dr. Rob Malenka. She is a fellow of the American Society of Clinical Investigators and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Katherine Chavez Velasquez, BSc
Katherine is a Research analyst in the the Liddle Lab at Duke University.
Hong-Yuan Chu, PhD
Hong-Yuan Chu, PhD, received his PhD degree in neuropharmacology from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (China) in 2010. He then relocated to the United States to conduct postdoctoral research with positions at the National Institute of Mental Health (Bethesda, MD) and the Department of Physiology and Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL). In 2019, Dr. Chu was recruited to the Department of Neurodegenerative Science at the Van Andel Institute (Grand Rapids, MI), where he is currently an assistant professor. His laboratory uses multiple technologies to understand how progressive dopaminergic neurodegeneration alters the connectivity and function of cortico-basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits, and how such changes contribute to the motor deficits in Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Chu holds an R01 research award from the National Institutes of Health and the NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (2020).
Rui Costa, PhD
His laboratory develops and uses genetic, electrophysiological, optical, and behavioral approaches to investigate the neurobiology of action in health and disease. He uncovered that direct and indirect striatal pathways are concurrently active during movement initiation, that this activity is action-specific, and needed for proper movement — challenging the classical “go/no-go” model of basal ganglia function. He also demonstrated dopaminergic neuron heterogeneity by showing that a subpopulation is active before movement, and critical for initiating and invigorating future movement. These findings have implications for movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease. He has received several awards such as the Ariëns Kappers Medal from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Young Investigator Award from SFN and is an elected member of EMBO and the National Academy of Medicine.
Stephanie Cragg, PhD
Stephanie Cragg, MA, DPhil, is Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of Christ Church College Oxford. Her research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms that govern dopamine transmission within the basal ganglia, spanning the interacting circuits and underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms. She has a strong focus on identifying dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease, through investigations in a range of parkinsonian models: transgenic, toxin-, or aggregation-induced. Dr. Cragg and her team have technical expertise in the use of electrochemistry, electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, and conditional genetic targeting, as well as optical and imaging technologies to probe the mechanisms governing dopamine transmission. Dr. Cragg is an Associate Editor of the open access journal npj Parkinson’s disease and is a founding Investigator of the Oxford Parkinson's Disease Centre.
Yang Dan, PhD
Yang Dan, PhD, is Nan Fung Life Sciences Chancellor’s Chair Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and an HHMI investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. She studied physics as an undergraduate student at Peking University and received her PhD training at Columbia University. She did her postdoctoral research on information coding in the visual system at Rockefeller University and Harvard Medical School. Her recent interest is to understand neural control and function of sleep. Using state-of-the-art techniques to target genetically defined cell types for recording and manipulation, Dr. Dan’s team has identified key circuits for the generation of both REM and non-REM sleep. Recently they have also begun investigating the function and homeostasis of sleep.
Ted Dawson, MD, PhD
Ted Dawson, MD, PhD, is the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Professor in Neurodegenerative Diseases and Director of the Institute for Cell Engineering at Johns Hopkins Medicine., He received his MD and pharmacology PhD from the University of Utah, followed by neurology residency at University of Pennsylvania and movement disorders fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Dawson’s honors include the Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award, the Santiago Grisolia Medal, and a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award. He was elected to the Association of American Physicians and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He pioneered the role of nitric oxide (NO) in neuronal injury, elucidated molecular mechanisms by which NO kills neurons, and discovered the parthanatos cell death pathway. His laboratory has made important discoveries on how neurons die in models of Parkinson’s disease, which are enabling clinical strategies for disease- modifying therapies for various neurodegenerative disorders.
Daniel Dombeck, PhD
Daniel Dombeck, PhD, is an Associate Professor and AT&T Research Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology at Northwestern University. He received his BSc in physics at The University of Illinois and his PhD in physics at Cornell University. He carried out postdoctoral research at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology and The Princeton Neuroscience Institute. Dr. Dombeck’s lab has pioneered the development and use of sub-cellular resolution functional imaging in behaving mice and discovered rapid movement related activity patterns from nigrostriatal dopamine axons. He was a Chicago Biomedical Consortium Junior Investigator, a Klingenstein Fellow, a McKnight Foundation Scholar, and a recipient of the Whitehall Research Grant Award. He is the associate director of the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience graduate program and the director of the NIMH Neurobiology of Information Storage Training Grant.
Robert Edwards, MD
Robert Edwards, MD, is a neuroscientist recognized for his work on the molecular and cellular basis of neurotransmitter release. He is known for identification of the proteins that transport classical transmitters into neurosecretory vesicles, and for his work on their properties, structure, mechanism, regulation, and physiological role. He has also used these transporters to elucidate the mechanisms for neurotransmitter corelease, identifying pools of synaptic vesicles with distinct properties and endocytic origin. In addition, he has used the transporters to identify proteins involved in the formation of dense core vesicles that store and release peptides. The work has implications for behavior and neuropsychiatric illness. In addition, identification of the vesicular monoamine transporter as neuroprotective has led to work on presynaptic mechanisms in Parkinson’s disease, most recently involving the function of alpha-synuclein and associated genetic determinants of Parkinson’s.
Cagla Eroglu, PhD
Cagla Eroglu, PhD, is Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Neurobiology at Duke University. Dr. Eroglu’s laboratory investigates the cellular and molecular underpinnings of how synaptic circuits are established and remodeled in the mammalian brain by the bidirectional signaling between neurons and glia and how disruption of these mechanisms contributes to the pathogenesis of neurological disorders. Dr. Eroglu received her PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratories and University of Heidelberg, Germany. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford University in the lab of Dr. Ben Barres. She joined the faculty of Cell Biology at Duke in 2008 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2016. She has served as a member of Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and translating Duke Health Neuroscience Initiative steering committees since 2019.
Andrew (Drew) Fox, PhD
Andrew Fox, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and a core scientist in Neuroscience and Behavior at the California National Primate Research Center. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he continued his postdoctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry. He has over 15 years of experience working with non-human primates to elucidate the neurobiology that underlies the development of brain-based disorders. His lab strives to integrate across methodologies and scale to gain neurobiological insights, and has incorporated data from, automated behavioral analysis, non-invasive brain imaging (e.g., MRI, PET), whole-genome sequencing, single-nuclear RNA-seq,, and viral-vector manipulations, among others. This extensive experience with primate models sets the stage for ongoing Parkinson’s-relevant research using cutting-edge methodologies. The Fox lab’s integrative approach to primate neuroscience is focused on a refined of understanding of the primate brain that bridges across molecular, systems, and behavioral neuroscience.
Adriana Galvan, PhD
Adriana Galvan, PhD, received her master’s and doctoral degrees in Mexico City (Mexico), and completed postdoctoral research training at Emory University (Atlanta, GA). She joined the faculty of Emory University in 2009 and is currently an Associate Professor of Neurology. She studies the brain regions involved in movement planning and execution known as the basal ganglia, which are strongly affected in Parkinson’s disease. Her work is conducted at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, where she uses functional and anatomical techniques, including electrophysiological recordings, optogenetic and chemogenetic techniques, as well as light and electron microscopy approaches to study motor circuits in primates. Dr. Galvan is also a project leader of Emory’s Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson’s Disease Research and receives independent research funding (R01, R21) from the National Institutes of Health.
