Neuroscience Projects

to manipulate miRNA networks acting in protein turnover dynamics during aging and neurodegeneration with the aim of favoring neuroprotection.

Giordano Lippi, PhD - The Scripps Research Institute

Eugenio Fornasiero, PhD - University Medical Center Göttingen

to characterize the role of meningeal peptidergic innervation in memory, cognitive function, and neurodegeneration.

Felipe Almeida de Pinho Ribeiro, PhD - Washington University in St. Louis

Jonathan Kipnis, PhD - Washington University in St. Louis

to test the hypothesis that the consolidation of memory traces from the hippocampus into the neocortex depends on a sharp-wave driven dialogue disrupted in memory disorders.

Simon Schultz, PhD - Imperial College London

Ksenia Kastanenka, PhD - Massachusetts General Hospital

to apply RNA-based CRISPR genomics in hESC-derived neurons for systematic functional analysis of neural-specific splicing and 3’UTR isoforms that are relevant to development and neurodegeneration.

Eric Lai, PhD - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Neville Sanjana, PhD - New York Genome Center and New York University

to define the role of a newly discovered form of astrocyte electrical activity on neuronal function, synaptic plasticity, and learning and memory using novel in vitro and in vivo imaging approaches.

Yoav Adam, PhD - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Chris Dulla, PhD - Tufts University School of Medicine

to identify astrocyte-neuron subproteomes in a pre-clinical model of permanent stroke, and find biomarkers and therapeutic strategies to stall neurodegeneration and cognitive decline in the long term.

Elena Blanco-Suarez - Thomas Jefferson University

Baljit Khakh, PhD - University of California, Los Angeles

to evaluate whether TDP-43 loss-of-function-related cryptic mis-splicing results in autoantibodies to aberrant neoepitopes in patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration.

William Seeley, MD - University of California, San Francisco

Michael Wilson, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

to leverage an evolutionary perspective to discover how the diversity of molecular states in astrocytes may underlie the resilience of the brain to neurodegeneration.

Maria Antonietta Tosches, PhD - Columbia University

to decipher the role of long-term, systemic brain-body crosstalk on neurodegeneration at the organismal level, using whole-body imaging and click chemistry labeling.

Li Ye, PhD - The Scripps Research Institute

to define changes in the pattern of myelination in the adult mouse brain in the context of remyelination and adaptive plasticity using light sheet imaging and automated cellular reconstruction.

Dwight Bergles, PhD - Johns Hopkins University

Jeremias Sulam, PhD - Johns Hopkins University

to perform molecular and functional dissection of cortical and thalamic inputs to the striatum and elucidate their involvement in Huntington’s disease pathophysiology.

Irina Dudanova, PhD - University Hospital Cologne

Takaki Komiyama, PhD - University of California, San Diego

to use in vivo whole-brain imaging, whole-body physiology, and computational modeling in zebrafish to map cholesterol dynamics and metabolism across brain regions and cell types, and their impact on cognitive functions.

Celia Shiau, PhD - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

En Yang, PhD - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

to unravel the circuit mechanisms underlying early psychiatric symptoms in proteinopathies by combining longitudinal functional recordings with novel post-hoc anatomical and molecular reconstructions.

Sabine Krabbe, PhD - German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases

to integrate computational predictions of molecular drivers from large human datasets with functional screening platforms to identify pathways that operate in astrocytes to drive neurodegeneration.

Naomi Habib, PhD - Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Francisco Quintana, PhD - Brigham and Women’s Hospital

to utilize lifespan tracking in a short-lived African killifish model, behavioral paradigms in aging mouse models, and comparative genomics to identify peripheral mechanisms of cognitive rejuvenation.

Param Priya Singh, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

Saul Villeda, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

to engineer a synthetic gene circuit for the noninvasive detection of protein aggregates in neurodegenerative conditions, using magnetic resonance imaging.

Arnab Mukherjee, PhD - University of California, Santa Barbara

Laura Segatori, PhD - Rice University

to define what extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins are deposited when memories are formed, which cell types are producing them, and whether ECM determines the strength of the memory trace.

Anna Victoria Molofsky, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

Ye Zhang, PhD - University of California, Los Angeles

to engineer chimeric brain models in which specific neural circuits or subtypes are replaced with cells of another species, to identify mechanisms for cognition, memory, and neurodegeneration.

Kristin Baldwin, PhD - Columbia University

Jun Wu, PhD - University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

to combine deep learning technologies and multiplexed mutational technologies in iPSCs to uncover novel causal genetic variants that drive protective and risk mechanisms across neurodegenerative diseases.

Douglas M. Fowler, PhD - University of Washington

Debora Marks, PhD - Harvard University

to test the hypothesis that DNA damage drives sleep pressure and DNA repair mechanisms are more active during sleep in different cell types in both mice and flies.

Luis de Lecea, PhD - Stanford University

Nara I. Muraro, PhD - Biomedicine Research Institute of Buenos Aires, IBioBA-CONICET-MPSP

to utilize an imaging-based approach to monitor in vivo subcellular autophagy dynamics in the mouse brain, allowing early detection of cell-specific autophagy failure during neurodegeneration.

Tal Laviv, PhD - Tel Aviv University

to investigate metabolic disruptions that impair learning and memory in ALS using super-resolution imaging of mitochondrial stabilization and state-of-the-art mitochondrial ATP imaging.

Vidhya Rangaraju, PhD - Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience

to identify how the epigenetic regulation of repetitive genetic elements influences human neural transcriptional networks in repeat-associated neurological disorders.

Christopher Douse, PhD - Lund University

to initiate the process of identifying convergent molecular pathways for regulating sleep efficiency using multi-omics and computational platforms.

Ying-Hui Fu, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

Arun Padmanabhan, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

to study the role of the cerebellum and cerebellar-dependent learning in regulating sleep, and mutually to investigate the role of the sleep in modulating cerebellar function during learning.

Farzaneh Najafi, PhD - Georgia Institute of Technology

Giulio Tononi, MD PhD - University of Wisconsin-Madison

to uncover the role of G-protein-coupled receptors in prion disease pathophysiology using high-throughput functional CRISPR assays integrated with spike-resolution optical readout of neuronal activity.

Adriano Aguzzi, PhD - University of Zurich

Madhuvanthi Kannan, PhD - University of Minnesota

to integrate multiple CRISPR-screens on imaging platforms to identify oligogenic combinations that modify microglial behavior and exacerbate pathological functions in neurodegenerative pathologies.

Cody Smith, PhD - University of Notre Dame

Beth Stevens, PhD - Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

to use cutting-edge mechanobiology approaches to decipher how cell intrinsic and extrinsic mechanical cues regulate microglia activation during neurophysiology and neurodegeneration.

Alba Diz Muñoz, PhD - European Molecular Biology Laboratory

to uncover the unique proteome landscape of subtypes of human iPSC-derived neuron and glial cells that contribute to the neuroimmune axis and are linked to the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases.

Alban Ordureau, PhD - Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Lorenz Studer, MD - Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

to use zebrafish whole-brain neuromodulator and calcium imaging, analysis, and modeling to identify neuronal mechanisms that underlie circadian and homeostatic regulation of sleep.

David Prober, PhD - California Institute of Technology

Matthew Thomson, PhD - California Institute of Technology

to characterize the functional alterations of ipRGCs and their brain targets implicated in alertness and sleep in Alzheimer’s disease and to determine their time course relative to cognitive decline.

Antoine Adamantidis, PhD - University of Bern

Ludovic S. Mure, PhD - Universitätsklinik für Augenheilkunde, Inselspital and University of Bern

to elucidate how sleep deprivation undermines the immune system and compromises distinct neural circuits regulating cognitive functions in health and neurodegenerative conditions.

Shinjae Chung, PhD - University of Pennsylvania

Yeong Shin Yim, PhD - University of Pennsylvania

to elucidate how the loss of interoceptive mechanisms driving plasticity in vascular signaling pathways to adapt blood delivery to areas of neuronal energy need contributes to neurodegeneration.

Osama Harraz, PhD - University of Vermont

Thomas Longden, PhD - University of Maryland Baltimore

to elucidate the role of myelin-forming glia and myelination in neurodegenerative sleep dysregulation using genetic mouse modeling, viral tracing, and Alzheimer’s patient-derived iPSCs.

Erin Gibson, PhD - Stanford University

to combine CRISPR-powered genetics and machine-learning-powered behavioral analysis to study how sleep evolved in its regulation and function in a selected group of the Drosophila genus.

Giorgio F. Gilestro, PhD - Imperial College London

Lucia Prieto-Godino, PhD - The Francis Crick Institute

to bring technological breakthroughs to scalably record and analyze spatial and temporal structures of single-cell gene expression in the living brain underlying learning and neurodegeneration.

Denise Cai, PhD - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Changyang Linghu, PhD - University of Michigan

to develop machine learning approaches spanning multiple levels of biology (multi-omic/neurophysiology/behavior) to reveal the biomolecular substrates responsible for memory storage and persistence.

André Fenton, PhD - New York University

Stefano Martiniani, PhD - New York University

to leverage a CRISPR activation/interference screening in non-coding GWAS regions to elucidate gene regulations underlying the resilience failure in mid-brain DP neurons derived from hPSCs.

Atsushi Fukuda, PhD - Tokai University, School of Medicine

Natsuhiko Kumasaka, PhD - Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo

to use cryo-electron microscopy and biochemical approaches to elucidate the mechanism underlying repeat-associated non-AUG translation initiation in neurodegeneration associated with short tandem repeat expansion disorders.

Jay Brito Querido, PhD - University of Michigan

Peter K. Todd, MD, PhD - University of Michigan

to leverage novel metabolic sensors and actuators in defined neural circuits to assess their impact on synaptic function, cellular physiology, and memory performance.

Priyamvada Rajasethupathy, MD, PhD - The Rockefeller University

Timothy Ryan, PhD - Weill Cornell Medicine

to take a multi-pronged approach using optical physiology to elucidate how dysregulation of metabolic crosstalk between neurons & astrocytes contributes to neurodegeneration.

Ghazaleh Ashrafi, PhD - Washington University in St. Louis

to leverage an antisense-based screening platform in human iPSC-derived neurons to elucidate human-specific microRNAs controlling mitochondrial homeostasis in neuronal health and disease.

Tatjana Kleele, PhD - ETH Zurich

Gerhard Schratt, PhD - ETH Zurich

to investigate the role of Arc capsids in mediating mechanisms of learning and intergenerational inheritance of experiences.

Bianca Jones Marlin, PhD - Columbia University

Jason Shepherd, PhD - University of Utah

to identify molecular determinants of memory persistence using concurrent in vivo imaging of neural activity and intracellular signaling dynamics as novel neural memory traces develop and decay.

Kevin Bolding, PhD - Monell Chemical Senses Center

Olivier Pertz, PhD - University of Bern

to establish the impact of Alzheimer’s disease pathology on molecularly-defined neural cells during cognitive tasks using sequentially-coupled calcium imaging with spatial transcriptomics.

Joseph Castellano, PhD - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Herbert Wu, PhD - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

to unravel how learning-induced transient neuronal activity is translated into a cell assembly’s lasting epigenetic code to store acquired memories.

David Dupret, PhD - University of Oxford

Johannes Gräff, PhD - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

to assess the impact of sleep fragmentation on neuroinflammation and BBB function in an Alzheimer’s disease mouse model and leverage the discovery of a novel sleep drive circuit to ameliorate these phenotypes.

Xiaoning Han, PhD - Johns Hopkins University

Mark Wu, PhD - Johns Hopkins University

to leverage and further develop new RNA-targeted microenvironment-mapping tools in patient-derived neurons, elucidating molecular mechanisms by which repeat-expansion RNAs drive neurodegeneration.

David Shechner, PhD - University of Washington

Gene Yeo, PhD - University of California San Diego

to identify all lysosomal metabolism genes contributing to neurodegeneration by combining high-throughput reverse genetics with functional multi-omics to investigate the lysosomal proteome.

Monther Abu-Remaileh, PhD - Stanford University

Natalia Gomez-Ospina, MD, PhD - Stanford University

to use a novel pooled gene tagging approach with high throughput microscopy and optical sequencing to map subcellular localization of hundreds of endogenous proteins in disease iPSC-derived neurons.

Ophir Shalem, PhD - Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania

Pablo Gonzalez Camara, PhD - University of Pennsylvania

to test the mechanisms of sleep-dependent memory consolidation using long-term wearable miniscopes that track and manipulate neural activity with single-cell precision in freely behaving animals.

Daniel Aharoni, PhD - University of California, Los Angeles

Gina Poe, PhD - University of California, Los Angeles

to leverage tissue-specific and temporal genetic switches to study how the central nervous system and peripheral tissues regulate circadian rhythms and sleep.

Karyn Esser, PhD - University of Florida

Eric Wang, PhD - University of Florida

to develop innovative ways to quantify brain aging taking into account spatial features, with the goal of developing targeted strategies to counter cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases.

James Zou, PhD - Stanford University

Anne Brunet, PhD - Stanford University

to elucidate regulatory mechanisms that enable one brain cell to influence the determination of the state of neighboring cells, and to characterize their perturbation in disease.

Philip De Jager, PhD - Columbia University

Martin Kampmann, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

to apply high throughput genetics in neurodegeneration models, sleep-dependent transcriptomics, and single molecule RNA subcellular localization to reveal the links between sleep and neurodegeneration.

Ravi Allada, MD - University of Michigan

Swathi Yadlapalli, PhD - University of Michigan

to study the sequestration of RNA binding proteins as a common pathogenic mechanism of neurodegeneration in tandem repeat disorders using a transformative new technology that leverages genome editing tools.

Mandana Arbab, PhD - Boston Children’s Hospital

Richard Sherwood, PhD - Brigham and Women’s Hospital

to bridge a knowledge gap between the memory function of sleep and the epigenetic mechanism of memory in the basolateral amygdala, a critical brain structure for emotion and memory.

Shawn Liu, PhD - Columbia University

Yueqing Peng, PhD - Columbia University

to identify circuit-activity-based tools to leverage sleep as a therapeutic agent for age-dependent neurodegeneration.

Noelle L’Etoile, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

Brendon O. Watson, MD PhD - University of Michigan

to unravel the role of homeostatic sleep and circadian-driven processes in nuclear function of diverse mouse brain cell populations combining cell-type specific nuclear isolation with deep sequencing and quantitative proteomics.

Angel Barco, PhD - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas

Maria Robles, PhD - LMU, Munich

to identify sleep-dependent and sleep-independent neurophysiological and biosynthetic processes linked to cognitive resilience during aging, and in the context of Alzheimer’s disease risk alleles.

Catherine Kaczorowski, PhD - University of Michigan

Sara Aton, PhD - University of Michigan

to combine biochemical study of postmortem Alzheimer’s disease brain tissue with new extracellular RNA analysis to define the RNA-bound diffusible amyloid beta complex and its toxicity.

Ryan Flynn, MD, PhD - Boston Children’s Hospital

Andrew Stern, MD, PhD - Brigham and Women’s Hospital

to establish a biologic and computational platform to study sleep effects on immune cells, identify molecular factors involved in sleep-immune homeostasis, and elucidate their underlying action mechanisms.

Michael Lazarus, PhD - International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine

Haruka Ozaki, PhD - Institute of Medicine at the University of Tsukuba

to establish cell-type-specific and functional catalogs of lipid droplets in brains and CRISPR-based human iPSC models of lipid dysregulation to elucidate brain lipid metabolism in health and disease.

Jeeyun Chung, PhD - Harvard University

Joongkyu Park, PhD - Wayne State University

to identify pathways and protein interactions hamsters use to degrade and regenerate synapses during cycles of hibernation and test if these can be used to counteract synapse loss in dementia.

Fan Liu, PhD - Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie

Patrik Verstreken, PhD - VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research

to leverage a state-of-the-art Alzheimer’s disease cell atlas to map cell-type-specific genetic effects in their neuropathologic context.

Maya Kasowski, MD PhD - Stanford University

Christopher Keene, MD PhD - University of Washington

to engineer cytokines that elicit immune responses in the brain specifically at sites of neurodegeneration, such as around amyloid beta aggregates.

Ethan Lippmann, PhD - Vanderbilt University

Jamie Spangler, PhD - Johns Hopkins University

to use in vivo brain imaging of natural sleep to elucidate how the gliovascular unit regulates brain waste clearance to identify targets for the prevention of neurodegeneration.

Rune Enger, MD, PhD - University of Oslo

to uncover the possible bidirectional link between TDP-43 proteinopathy and immune activation/dysregulation in neurodegeneration.

Pietro Fratta, MD PhD - University College London and The Francis Crick Institute

Ning (Jenny) Jiang, PhD - University of Pennsylvania

to combine newly developed neurotransmitter indicators, imaging hardware, processing algorithms, and inference methods to build a pipeline for measuring neural computations in vivo.

Adam Charles, PhD - Johns Hopkins University

Kaspar Podgorski, PhD - Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics

to uncover conserved, tissue-specific responses to sleep loss using single-cell genomic profiling in flies and mice and functional screens for factors promoting tissue health during sleep restriction.

Elizabeth Pollina, PhD - Washington University in St. Louis

Dragana Rogulja, PhD - Harvard University

to employ a computational design approach to test the role of amyloid assembly kinetics and stability on the formation and duration of long-term memory in animal models.

Lukasz Joachimiak, PhD - University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Kausik Si, PhD - Stowers Institute for Medical Research

to determine the IgLON5 interactome and identify proteins with impaired turnover in a model of inflammatory-dependent tauopathy (anti-IgLON5 disease) to identify therapeutic targets for tauopathies.

Luís Ribeiro, PhD - University of Coimbra

Jeffrey Savas, PhD - Northwestern University

to use a hybrid approach with human and fly genetics to prioritize and characterize novel candidates regulating circadian entrainment.

Qili Liu, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

Louis Ptacek, PhD - University of California, San Francisco

to perform molecular and ultrastructural analyses to quantify the synaptic and cellular effects of extreme chronic sleep loss in the sandpiper, a model of sustained high waking performance.

Chiara Cirelli, MD, PhD - University of Wisconsin-Madison

John Lesku, PhD - La Trobe University

to generate novel genetic toolkits to determine the roles of oligodendrocytes and to spatiotemporally map myelination in a neural circuit-specific manner during neurodegeneration.

Lu Sun, PhD - University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

to develop an ultrasound microvascular imaging technique that provides structural (vessel morphology) and functional (neural activities) evaluation of brains affected by neurodegenerative diseases.

Pengfei Song, PhD - University of Illinois

to identify cell engineering strategies that sustain the protective function of microglia as a new therapeutic direction for neurodegenerative diseases.

Frederick Bennett, MD - University of Pennsylvania