Erinc Halliacli, PhD
Erinc Hallacli is an instructor in neurology in Vikram Khurana's lab at Brigham and Womens' Hospital. He was trained as a molecular biologist and geneticist as an undergraduate. He received an MSc degree from Heidelberg University, Germany for his work on the relationship between RNA export and transcription conducted in Ed Hurt lab. He studied genome-wide chromatin regulators with Asifa Akhtar in EMBL and Max Planck Institute for his doctoral thesis. He started his research on RNA binding proteins as prions in Susan Lindquist lab. He has been working on the relationship between RNA binding proteins and alpha-synuclein in Dr.Khurana lab. He is currently an instructor at Harvard Medical School and holds several awards including EMBO and HFSP fellowships.
Raja Sekhar Nirujogi, PhD
Raja is an Independent Investigator at Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at University of Dundee. He contributed to the identification of LRRK2 kinase substrates and developed targeted mass spectrometry assays and organelle proteomic methodologies. His current research is focused on applying single cell proteomic methodologies to better understand PD brain disease heterogeneity.
Esther Sammler, MD, PhD
Esther is a clinician-scientist with a focus on Parkinson’s disease (PD) and neurogenetics. Her research uses a translational bench-to-bedside approach to accelerate the validation and application of basic scientific discoveries for obtaining a better understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms in PD and developing biomarkers for patient stratification. Her recent work has centered on LRRK2 and its modifiers: She has developed new methods using surrogate biochemical markers to interrogate the activity of LRRK2 in peripheral blood cells. In collaboration with Dario Alessi and Alexander Zimprich, she has shown that people with PD who carry a particular pair of mutations have significantly increased activity in the LRRK2 kinase pathway, suggesting that these mutations activate LRRK2 by a yet unknown mechanism. In addition, Dr. Sammler runs a specialist PD clinic and acts as principal investigator for clinical trials and research projects
Sreeja Vijayan Nair, PhD
Sreeja is a postdoctoral researcher in the Pfeffer lab at the Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University. She completed her graduate studies at IISER Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. During her graduate research, she worked on regulators of the NF-kB signaling pathway and protein ubiquitination.
Le Zhang, PhD
Le Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine. Le obtained her B.S. in Biological Science from Peking University and her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Hong Kong. Le had her postdoctoral trainings at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School.
Daniel El Kodsi, PhD
During Daniel's scientific training as a neuroscientist, under Dr. Michael Schlossmacher, he focused on the pathogenesis of early-onset parkinsonism. He was able to: (i) investigate the PD pathogenesis and delineate disease mechanisms; (ii) build animal models to restage PD gene-linked neural degeneration; and (i) delineate Parkin-related cellular mechanisms using both cell and protein modelling. These efforts culminated in the discovery of a novel antioxidant function for wild-type parkin in human brain. Transitioning into more clinical work, he focused on COVID-19 research, sero-surveillance and prevalence, under the supervision of Dr. Amy Hsu. As a clinical research program manager he was tasked with: (i) assessing SARS-CoV-2 infection, re-infection, and serious outcomes in Long-Term Care (LTC) sector; (ii) investigating natural and vaccine-induced immunity; and (iii) building prediction models for SARS-CoV-2. This allowed him to harness high-level project management skills.
Stefan Semrau
Prior to joining NYSCF Stefan was was a postdoctoral fellow with Alexander van Oudenaarden at MIT (systems biology) and Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institutean and ran an independent research group as associate professor of physics at Leiden University. His work has focused on using single-cell techniques to study the mechanisms underlying cell fate decisions and the development of computational tools to interrogate single-cell and multiomics data.
Geidy Serrano, PhD
Geidy Serrano is the director of the Brain and Body Donation Program Neuropathology laboratory. she works closely with multidisciplinary laboratories and investigators to support neuropathological and translational research.
YuHong Fu, PhD
YuHong is a senior research fellow at the Brain and Mind Center of the University of Sydney, specializing in human neuropathology and the molecular mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disease. She brings advanced histopathology expertise and extensive experience analyzing postmortem human and rodent brain tissue. Her research focuses on selective neuronal vulnerability and glial pathogenic pathways in synucleinopathies.
Veronique Daniels, PhD
Veronique is an innovation manager at KU Leuven, covering the areas of molecular imaging and Parkinson’s disease. Veronique has a key role in valorising the research results and connecting with relevant industry partners, other academic groups and patient organisations. Additionally, she is managing the Leuven Viral Vector Core. Veronique completed her PhD in Biomedical sciences in the lab of Prof. Baekelandt. She pursued her research career as a post-doctoral scientists at UCB (Belgium) working on in vitro pharmacology and assay development. From 2015 to 2017, Veronique was employed as a Study Director at Toxikon Europe (Belgium) where she was devoted to consulting and management of extractables and leachables studies.
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.
Leo Tsai, PhD
Leo Tsai is a neuroscientist whose work focuses on the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying Parkinson’s disease. Over the past decade, he has advanced the understanding of PINK1/Parkin-mediated mitochondrial quality control and contributed to the discovery of two Parkinson’s disease genes through genomic studies. His research integrates molecular biology, functional genomics, and cell-based assays to uncover early pathogenic events and identify potential biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease. Leo is committed to translating mechanistic insights into strategies that enable earlier detection and therapeutic intervention.
Monther Abu-Remaileh, PhD
Monther Abu-Remaileh, PhD, is an assistant professor of chemical engineering and by courtesy of genetics at Stanford University. He is an expert in lysosome biology and metabolism, and his team develops and uses multidisciplinary approaches, including metabolomics, proteomics and functional genomics, to study the biochemical functions of the lysosome. His lab is committed to applying these tools to provide molecular understanding of the lysosomal dysfunction in Parkinson's disease, which has been implicated in disease pathology. Dr. Abu-Remaileh earned his B.Sc. in Genetics from Jordan University of Science and Technology and his doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and then completed his postdoctoral training at MIT.
Stein Aerts, PhD
Prof. Stein Aerts has a multidisciplinary background in both bio-engineering and computer science. During his PhD he was trained in bioinformatics, and during his Postdoc he worked on the genomics of gene regulation in Drosophila. Stein’s lab focuses on deciphering the genomic regulatory code, using a combination of single-cell, machine-learning, and experimental approaches. Stein co-founded the Fly Cell Atlas consortium and generated a single-cell atlas of the ageing Drosophila brain. He holds an ERC Consolidator Grant and was awarded the 2017 Prize for Bioinformatics and Computational Science from the Biotech Fund and the 2016 Astrazeneca Foundation Award Bioinformatics.
Dario Alessi, PhD
Professor Dario Alessi serves as the Director of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at the University of Dundee. His research focuses on unravelling the roles of poorly characterised components which regulate human disease resulting from disruption of signalling networks. He has contributed to our understanding of several disease relevant signal transduction pathways including PDK1 (diabetes and cancer), LKB1 (cancer), WNKs (blood pressure). Much of Dario’s current work is focused on understanding LRRK2 and how mutations in this enzyme cause Parkinson’s disease.
Oke Avwenagha, PhD
Prior to joining Team Hardy at the end of March 2021 I worked in Research Governance & Management at the Department of Neurodegenerative Disease & MRC Prion Unit, UCL Institute of Neurology. My previous roles were at the Science Funding Division, the Wellcome Trust and the UCL/UCLH R&D Office where I managed a range of clinical, basic and epidemiological research. I obtained my BSc (honours) and PhD in Neuroscience at UCL.
Veerle Baekelandt, PhD
Veerle is a professor in the Department of Neurosciences at the KU Leuven in Belgium. She has a PhD degree in neurobiology from the KU Leuven in 1995. During her PhD she obtained a Frank Boas Fulbright fellowship for a research visit in Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She was appointed as an assistant professor and head of the Laboratory for Neurobiology and Gene Therapy at the faculty of medicine at KU Leuven in 2003. In collaboration with the virologist Dr. Zeger Debyser, they were the first research groups to introduce viral vector technology in Belgium. She has acquired international recognition for the application of viral vectors in rodent brain to model and study PD and more recently for demonstrating a prion-like behaviour of the α-synuclein protein.
Enrico Bagnoli, PhD
Enrico recently joined the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at the University of Dundee. He completed a PhD in Neuroscience at the National University of Ireland, Galway working on novel organotypic model of prodromal Parkinson's disease. Before moving to Ireland and to the field of Neuroscience, Enrico obtained a Master and Bachelor degree in Bioengineering from the University of Genoa, Italy, working on tunable and biodegradable nanodelivery system for cancer therapy.
Jane Balster, BA
Jane is an experienced project manager having worked in the scientific arena for 6 years. Previously a program manager in cancer research and now with the department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota. Jane is not a scientist, but has a degree in business and communications and can use her unique skill set to organize and manage diverse scientific projects.
