Valentina Fossati, PhD
Valentina is a Senior Research Investigator at the NYSCF | JAX collaborative, where her research focuses on glia-driven pathogenic mechanisms in PD, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and other CNS disorders. She earned her undergraduate degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and a PhD in Stem Cell Biology from the University of Bologna and completed postdoctoral training at Mount Sinai in New York. Valentina pioneered the development of human iPSC-derived glial cell models, establishing protocols for oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, microglia, and 3D organoid systems. She generated the first iPSC lines from individuals with progressive multiple sclerosis, led large-scale studies to uncover inflammatory glial phenotypes in MS and pioneered stem cell studies in Low Earth Orbit.
Matthew Goldberg, PhD
Matt Goldberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has been a leader in the generation and characterization of targeted mutant mice and rats bearing mutations causally linked to PD.
Philip Denner, PhD
Philip is Head of the Core Facility for Lab Automation Technologies (CRFS-LAT) and leads the Core Research Facilities and Services (CRFS) at DZNE Bonn, Germany. A biochemist with over 20 years of academic and industry experience, he specializes in high-content screening (HCS) and image-based analysis to quantify cellular phenotypes across disease areas. Philip also develops advanced human cell models to improve the translational impact of preclinical research and drug discovery.
James Fraser, PhD
James Fraser is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley with Tom Alber on how conformational dynamics shape enzymatic catalysis. His contributions have been recognized with honors including the Pew Scholar Award, the Searle Scholars Award, the Packard Fellowship, the IUCr W.H. and W.L. Bragg Prize, and the Protein Society Carl Brändén Award.
Bryan Roth, MD, PhD
Bryan Roth is the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at UNC Chapel Hill Medical School and the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health Psychoactive Drug Screening Program.
Dmytro Radchenko, PhD
Dmytro Radchenko is Head of Parallel Chemistry at Enamine Ltd. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and completed an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. Since joining Enamine in 2018, he has led the building and expansion of Enamine REAL Space, one of the world's largest collections of synthetically accessible, make-on-demand compounds.
Balyn Zaro, PhD
Balyn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California San Francisco. She studied chemical biology and protein glycosylation as a graduate student with Matthew Pratt at the University of Southern California. As post-doctoral researcher with Benjamin Cravatt at Scripps Research, she studied covalent drug development and chemoproteomics. She gained additional training in hematopoiesis and innate immunity with Irving Weissman at Stanford School of Medicine.
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.
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.
Ayse Ulusoy, PhD
Ayse received her PhD in 2010 in Lund (Sweden). There, she gained expertise in developing animal models of neurodegeneration, particularly by designing and applying specific adeno-associated viral vectors in vivo to modulate disease-related gene expression in the dopaminergic system. Later, she worked at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Bonn (Germany) as a post-doctoral researcher, where she expanded her research to investigate Parkinson’s disease pathology beyond the nigrostriatal system. Particularly, she is interested in elucidating mechanisms of alpha-synuclein spreading throughout the brain as well as in the peripheral nervous system. She is currently pursuing her research interests as a staff scientist at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Bonn.
Eva-Maria Surmann, PhD
Dr. Eva-Maria Surmann, Associate Director of Business Portfolio Management at The Jackson Laboratory, leads the development and commercialization of advanced stem cell model platforms. She oversees JAX’s commercial stem cell program, including building a high-quality iPSC repository and collaborating with large-scale initiatives like iNDI to enable global access. She holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Cambridge and brings over a decade of experience in biomedical research and product development.
Michael Koob, PhD
Michael is a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, and a founding member of the Institute for Translational Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota.
Peter Loskill, PhD
Peter is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and at the NMI Reutlingen. He studies biophysics at Saarland University and conducted his postdoctoral research in the Bioengineering Department at UC Berkeley. He has almost 15 years of experience developing and applying hiPSC based Organ-on-Chip models.
Justin McDonough, PhD
Justin is Associate Director of the Cellular Engineering Service at The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), where he leads a high-throughput iPSC genome engineering program and other stem cell-based initiatives. He earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a career focused on genetic engineering and advanced cellular models. Justin has extensive expertise in precision CRISPR editing and rigorous genomic QC. He collaborated to establish a scalable pipeline for engineering hiPSCs at JAX, including the iNDI resource, enabling the generation of complex, disease-relevant models for global distribution.
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.
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.
