Close-up imaging of a web of multicolored neural connections, showing a measurement scale of about 400 micrometers across in its entirety.

Brigham Neuroscience Day 2024

Organized By:

Brigham Research Institute, Department of Neurology

Location:

Marshall A. Wolf Conference Center and Hale Café Atrium

Start Time:

April 29, 2024 8:00 am EST

End Time:

April 29, 2024 7:00 pm EST

Brigham Neuroscience Day celebrates the groundbreaking neuroscience research ongoing across Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

**Only open to the Brigham and other Mass General Brigham affiliated employees**

This event is co-sponsored by the Brigham Research Institute (BRI) and the Department of Neurology, but is open to all the Brigham and Women’s Hospital community interested in neuroscience research. The event will feature multiple keynote speakers, short talks by BWH faculty, panel discussion, and a poster session featuring the latest work of Brigham labs working in the neuroscience field.

Submission of poster abstracts is now closed. Deadline to submit was Monday, April 1st, 2024 at noon. You can view the abstracts for all of our presenters on our poster site here.

For more information, please contact Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD (tpearse@bwh.harvard.edu) or Will Renthal (wrenthal@bwh.harvard.edu).


AGENDA

Location: Marshall A. Wolf Conference Center; Hale BTM 3rd floor (unless otherwise noted).
Click here for directions.

  • 8:00-8:30 am – Arrival and coffee/breakfast
  • 8:30-9:00 am – Welcome remarks: Tracy Batchelor, MD
  • 9:00-10:15 am – Internal Session 1: Research in Basic Neuroscience
  • 10:15-10:30 am – Coffee Break
  • 10:30-11:30 pm – Panel discussion on “Publishing in Neuroscience and Neurology”
    • Moderator: Charles Jennings, PhD
    • Ted Dobie, PhD | Scientific Editor, Neuron published by Cell Press
    • Allan Ropper, MD | Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and Associate Editor, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
    • Elizabeth Loder, MD | Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and Head of Research, British Medical Journal (BMJ)
    • John Inglis, PhD | Executive Director, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press and Co Founder of bioRxiv
  • 11:30-12:00 pm – Break, pick up lunch
  • 12:00-1:15 pmKeynote #1: “Spatially resolved single-cell genomics & cell atlas of the brain”
  • 1:15-2:30 pm – Internal Session 2: Translational Research in Neuroscience
  • 2:30-2:45 – Coffee Break
  • 2:45-4:00 pm – Internal Session 3: Clinical Trials in Neurology
  • 4:00-5:00 pmKeynote #2: “Programmable molecular technologies for genome editing and cell control”
    • Moderator/Introduction: Will Renthal, MD, PhD
    • Omar Abudayyeh, PhD | Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General Brigham’s Gene and Cell Therapy Institute, and faculty member with the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University
    • Jonathan Gootenberg, PhD | Member of the Faculty at Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Center for Vaccine and Virology Research, with affiliations with the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and the Department of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  • 5:00-5:15 – Head to Hale Atrium, 1st Floor (Click here for directions.)
  • 5:15-7:00 pm – Poster session and Reception, award ceremony (Hale Atrium, 1st Floor)

    PRESENTER BIOS

    Tracy Batchelor, MD, MPH


    Dr. Batchelor is Chair, Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Co-Leader of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Neuro-Oncology Program, and the Martin A. Samuels, M.D. Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. His career has focused on developing novel, targeted therapeutics for brain cancer. His is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Harvard P50/SPORE grant, Targeted Therapies in Glioma, the PI of the Harvard/Stanford site in the NCI/U19 Glioblastoma Therapeutics Network and PI of a T32 training grant in cancer neuroscience.

    Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD


    Tracy Young-Pearse is an Associate Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Dennis J. Selkoe Distinguished Chair in Neurology and the Vice Chair of Basic Research in the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She received her undergraduate degree from Skidmore College and then entered the Biomedical and Biological Sciences (BBS) program at HMS. There she earned her Ph.D. in Genetics under the mentorship of Connie Cepko. She established her independent lab in 2010 in the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases. She is a member of the FNIH funded Accelerating Medicines Partnership Program for Alzheimer’s Disease (AMP-AD), beginning from its launch in 2014. The Young-Pearse lab focuses on the identification of the mechanistic causes of neurodegenerative and developmental disorders of the nervous system, with the ultimate goal of identifying novel targets for therapeutic interventions for these diseases. The lab uses human stem cells, rodent models, and primary human tissues to study the impact of genetic risk and resilience factors on the biology of cells in the brain. The lab’s website can be found at: youngpearselab.bwh.harvard.edu.

    Charles Jennings, PhD


    Charles Jennings is Executive Director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases and the Program for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He joined BWH in December 2017 and is also appointed as a lecturer in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

    Originally from the UK, Dr. Jennings was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and subsequently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying embryonic development and the formation of neuromuscular synapses. In 1993 he joined the scientific journal Nature as an editor, and in 1998 he was appointed as founding chief editor of the newly announced journal Nature Neuroscience, based in New York.  He held this position for five years, during which the journal established itself as one of the preeminent journals in its field.  In 2003 he became executive editor of all the Nature monthly research journals, responsible for managing the editorial department and developing long-term editorial and publishing strategies for the Nature Publishing Group.

    After a decade in scientific publishing, Dr. Jennings returned to Harvard in 2004 as the first executive director of the newly established Harvard Stem Cell Institute. In 2006 he moved to MIT, as director of the McGovern Institute Neurotechnology Program, supporting collaborative projects across all areas of neuroscience, within and beyond MIT. He was also responsible for establishing and overseeing core facilities at MIT and for raising funds for strategic programs in diverse fields, including brain imaging, high-performance computing, gene delivery and transgenic animal models.

    Dr. Jennings has served as an advisor to the Connecticut State Stem Cell Program and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, and as a member of the Public Education and Communications Committee of the Society for Neuroscience.  He received a B.A. in zoology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from University College London.

    Dennis Selkoe, MD

    Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School; Co-Director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Graduated Columbia and University of Virginia, trained at NIH, Harvard/Longwood Neurology and HMS Department of Neuroscience.  Selkoe and colleagues isolated the tangles of Alzheimer’s disease and co-discovered their antigenic relationship to tau.  His research on amyloid ß-protein and APP led to the “amyloid hypothesis” of AD, showed that Ab is produced by cells throughout life, and that mutations in APP and, later, presenilin, increase Ab. Michael Wolfe and Selkoe identified presenilin as g-secretase. His lab has applied similar approaches to alpha-synuclein, the key protein of Parkinson’s disease.  Selkoe has focused on translating his discoveries on the cause and mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease into therapeutic approaches, and his findings have provided the underpinnings and rationale of numerous disease-modifying trials currently underway worldwide.

    He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and Association of American Physicians and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was the principal founding scientist of Athena Neurosciences, and is now a founding director of Prothena Biosciences.

    Humsa Venkatesh, MD

    Humsa received her undergraduate degree in Chemical Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and her PhD in Cancer Biology from Stanford University.

     After completing her postdoctoral work, she joined the Stanford faculty in 2019 and is now starting her Cancer Neuroscience research program as Assistant Professor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She has been recognized by the MIT Technology Review as a Pioneer Under 35 ‘TR35’ (2018), by Genetic Engineering News as a ‘Top 10 innovator to  watch under 40’ (2019), and won the Science & SciLife Prize for Young Scientists (2019).

    Hyun-Sik Yang, MD


    Hyun-Sik is a physician-scientist with clinical and scientific expertise in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Hyun-Sik spent most of his childhood and young adulthood in South Korea, although he also lived in Fairfax, Virginia when he was 7 and in Lexington, Kentucky when he was 18. After graduating from Seoul National University College of Medicine (MD), Hyun-Sik pursued his internship at Mass General Brigham Salem Hospital, neurology residency at the Mass General Brigham Neurology Residency (class of 2016), and Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). During his residency, fellowship, and early faculty years, Hyun-Sik was mentored by Dr. Reisa A. Sperling (Alzheimer’s disease clinical research) and Dr. Philip L. De Jager (Neurogenomics). Hyun-Sik sees cognitive neurology patients on Monday mornings at BWH and spends the remainder of his work hours in the lab. Outside of work, Hyun-Sik enjoys spending time with his wife, Ga Young Lee (neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School), and their miniature poodle Linus (named after the Peanuts character, the chemist, as well as Linux). Hyun-Sik loves to run along the Charles, so you may spot him running with Linus!

    Shambhu Yadav, PhD


    I am currently serving as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow conducting research under Prof. Thomas Michel at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. I am passionately focused on redox metabolism and oxidant-modulated signaling in both cell and animal models. In 2014, I received a master’s degree in molecular genetics and protein engineering from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Mohali, India. In 2019, I received my Ph.D. in Redox Biochemistry from IISER Mohali under Prof. Anand Kumar Bachhawat, where I explored two different aspects of altered glutathione metabolism in two different model systems, zebrafish, and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Currently, I am studying the signal transduction in the cardiovascular and neurovascular system in health and disease with a focus on using chemogenetic approaches to dissect the role of cellular oxidants in neurodegenerative diseases.

    My specialties include basic and pre-clinical research; neurovascular physiology; redox, calcium, and nitric oxide signaling; sulfur metabolism; animal models; cell culture; molecular biology; molecular genetics; and biochemistry

    Ted Dobie, PhD


    Ted Dobie received his PhD from the University of British Columbia, studying molecular and cellular mechanisms of synapse formation and plasticity under Dr. Ann Marie Craig. For his postdoctoral studies at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, he worked with Dr. Guoping Feng, looking at mouse models of heritable neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. He joined Elsevier in 2015 as Scientific Editor for the translational research journal eBioMedicine, a joint venture of Cell Press and The Lancet. Ted moved to Neuron in 2017, where he enjoys working with authors on molecular/cellular, disease-related, and systems neuroscience papers.

    Allan Ropper, MD


    Dr. Allan H. Ropper is Professor of Neurology of Harvard Medical School and an Associate Editor of the New England Journal of Medicines. He was born in 1950 in New York, New York, received his B.A. from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and his M.D. from Cornell University MedicalCollege in New York in 1974. Dr. Ropper trained in Internal Medicine at UCSF-Moffit Hospital and in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

     Dr. Ropper’s work has been predominantly in the field of neurological intensive care and related disorders such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and brain death. He has conducted NIH sponsored studies of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) for the treatment of diabetic neuropathy and experimental models of chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. He has over 180 publications and is the lead author of the most widely consulted textbook of neurology, Principles ofNeurology, which will be coming out in its XII edition. He is a longtime contributor to several major textbooks of medicine including Harrison’s Principles of lnternal Medicine. He has won numerous awards including the Raymond D. Adams Award of the ANA, Lifetime Achievement Award of the AAN, and Distinguished Alumni Award from Cornell Weill Medical School. He was elected an honorary FRCP. His book on the life of a neurologist for the general public Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole was a Times of London and BBC book of the week and his recently completed book How the Brain Lost Its Mind will be published by Avery/Penguin Press. He has received numerous awards for teaching and service.

    Elizabeth Loder, MD


    Dr. Loder is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. A headache clinician, researcher and clinical epidemiology editor for the BMJ, she is the past President of the American Headache Society and has served on the Executive Council of the International Headache Society. She is a past president of the New England Pain Society and is the Vice President of the Headache Cooperative of New England. She has written over 100 original and review articles and book chapters and edited three books, including Refractory Migraine.

    John Inglis, PhD

     

    John Inglis graduated from Edinburgh University Medical School with a Ph.D. in immunology and soon afterwards joined the editorial staff of the weekly medical journal The Lancet. Three years later, he founded the monthly review journal, Immunology Today (now Trends in Immunology) and edited it for seven years while launching and managing other journals. He also wrote articles on biomedicine for British newspapers and New Scientist magazine.

    In 1987, John came to the United States to found Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, building on a respected publishing program that consisted then of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium proceedings, a small number of monographs and manuals, and the 6-month-old journal Genes & Development. Today, the Press is a digital publisher of 9 journals, 200 books in print and electronic formats, and online media with varied business models. It has developed two of the world’s top genetics journals as well as many laboratory manuals, handbooks, and monographs that scientists worldwide regard as essential. The mission of the Press is to create publications and services that help scientists succeed, while contributing funds to the Laboratory and maintaining its exceptional reputation in scientific communication and education.

    John also co-founded and manage bioRxiv, a service of the Laboratory launched in 2013 that is the largest source of preprints of research papers in the life sciences, and medRxiv, a preprint server for health sciences that was launched in June 2019. He has edited four books, including Davenport’s Dream: 21st Century Reflections on Heredity and Eugenics and Inspiring Science: Jim Watson and the Age of DNA.

    Xiaowei Zhuang, PhD

    Xiaowei Zhuang works in the areas of single-molecule biology and bioimaging, developing imaging techniques to study biological systems quantitatively. The understanding of living organisms has greatly benefited from imaging tools. In particular, understanding the inner workings of a cell requires imaging techniques with molecular-scale resolution such that molecular interactions and processes inside the cell can be directly visualized. Members of the Zhuang lab apply their diverse expertise in chemistry, physics, biology and engineering to develop imaging methods with single-molecule sensitivity, nanometer-scale resolution, and dynamic imaging capability to meet these challenges. They further apply these tools to study a variety of biological problems, such as how proteins and nucleic acids interact, how viruses infect cells, and how neurons compute.

    Zhuang received her B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China, Ph.D. Degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and postdoctoral training in biophysics at Stanford University. In 2001, she became an assistant professor at Harvard University, where she was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and full professor in 2006. She joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator in 2005. Zhuang is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of American Association of the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. She serves on the editorial boards of Cell, eLife, Annual Review of Biophysics, Chemical Physics Letters, and Optical Nanoscopy.

    Vikram Khurana, MD, PhD

     

    Dr. Khurana is Chief of the Division of Movement Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He is Principal Faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the MSA Coalition. His clinical and research interests relate to neurodegenerative disorders focusing on Parkinson’s disease (PD) and related dementias, rarer disorders including multiple system atrophy and ataxias. Patients with these disorders are seen by him at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the P+A+MSA clinic.

    Dr. Khurana is a medical graduate of the University of Sydney, Australia, and came to Boston as a Fulbright Scholar in 2001, obtaining his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University in 2006. He completed his neurology residency at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals, and fellowship in movement disorders and ataxia at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was on the faculty from 2012 to 2016. Dr. Khurana received postdoctoral training in the laboratories of Drs. Susan Lindquist and Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (MIT), at which time he led some of the first studies to identify and reverse pathologies in human stem cells derived from PD patients.

    His current research continues to bring stem-cell technologies toward personalized and precise diagnostics and therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Khurana’s research has been recognized through grants and awards, including federal grants from the NIH and Department of Defense, foundation grants from the American Academy of Neurology, Michael J Fox Foundation, Multiple System Atrophy Coalition, National Ataxia Foundation, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation among others. In 2018, he was named a Robertson Investigator of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, in 2019 a George C. Cotzias Fellow of the American Parkinson’s Disease Association and in 2020 an investigator of the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Initiative.

    Anna Krichevsky, PhD


    Anna Krichevsky is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. She earned her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and completed her postdoctoral training at BWH/ HMS. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Krichevsky isolated neuronal RNA granules and conducted pioneering research that contributed to our understanding of microRNA functions and RNA interference mechanisms in brain physiology and pathology. She performed the first successful RNA interference in mammalian neurons, contributed to the identification of miRNAs in the mammalian brain, developed the first high-throughput arrays for miRNA expression profiling, and discovered oncogenic miRNAs, miR-21 and miR-10b, in glioblastoma- both are promising targets for high-grade gliomas and other oncologic diseases. The Krichevsky laboratory identified and studied key miRNAs and other non-coding RNAs implicated in brain tumors and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. The lab also led the way in identifying RNA biomarkers for diagnostics and monitoring of primary and metastatic brain tumors. Dr. Krichevsky’s research is concentrated on several main areas: 1) investigation of essential regulatory RNA, both long and small, in the brain and brain pathologies, 2) revealing the targetable hubs associated with RNA pathologies, and 3) developing therapeutic strategies for targeting regulatory RNA for neuro-oncologic (glioblastoma) and neurodegenerative (Alzheimer’s) diseases. Additionally, she serves on the Executive Committee of the Harvard Medical School Initiative for RNA Medicine, which aims to translate RNA research into clinical practice.

    Oleg Butovsky, PhD

     

    Dr. Butovsky and his lab are internationally recognized for investigations that have redefined the understanding of microglia and led to the identification of novel potential therapy targets for ALS as well as new roles of APOE in microglia regulation in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease. The group specializes in the generation of novel tools and methods to study microglial biology in health and disease including: 1) identification of a unique molecular microglia signature in health and disease; 2) generation of microglia and monocyte specific mAbs; 3) development of a new technique to culture adult mouse and human microglia in vitro; 4) generation of microglia specific-Cre transgenic mice to study the role and function of microglia biology; 5) identification of novel microglial surface molecules in health and neurodegenerative disease for developing PET-based biomarkers; and 6) identification of the new role of APOE/miR-155 signaling in regulation of microglia phenotype and function in neurodegeneration that can serve as drug targets for therapy in ALS and AD. These advances have major implications which will not only further our understanding of normal CNS function, but will open up new avenues for elucidating the relationship between microglia and CNS diseases. Most importantly, an opportunity has been created to explore the ways in which microglia may be imaged and targeted for the treatment of disease.

    The lab is actively involved in multiple international and national collaborative efforts including those local to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard, and the Broad Institute of MIT and with clinical scientists to translate basic observations and validate their application in human disease. The laboratory’s grant support sustains studies related to identification of therapeutic targets and biomarkers of central and peripheral innate immunity

    Andrew Pines, MD

     

    Andrew completed his undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Economics at the University of Denver. After college, Andrew completed a Master’s in Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Before medical school, Andrew worked as a research technician in a neurosurgery lab that focused on educating patients and residents using 3D printing, augmented reality, and simulation modules. In medical school, Andrew designed and taught a wilderness medicine course, received a grant for educational innovation, and earned a certificate in the Science of Health Care Delivery. In residency, Andrew has had broad clinical interests with a particular focus on psychosis. Andrew joined the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics when coming to Brigham and has since been using causal sources of data—such as lesions, cortical stimulation, and deep brain stimulation—to localize the neuroanatomy responsible for psychotic symptoms.

    The lab is actively involved in multiple international and national collaborative efforts including those local to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard, and the Broad Institute of MIT and with clinical scientists to translate basic observations and validate their application in human disease. The laboratory’s grant support sustains studies related to identification of therapeutic targets and biomarkers of central and peripheral innate immunity

    Tanuja Chitnis, MD


    Dr. Chitnis is the Cindy Larsen Chugg Distinguished Chair in Neurology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. She is also the founding Director of the Mass General Brigham Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She has cared for adults and children with multiple sclerosis and neuroimmunological disorders for over 20 years. Additionally, she serves as the co-Director of the Brigham Multiple Sclerosis Center and is the Director of the Comprehensive Longitudinal Investigation of MS at the Brigham (CLIMB) study and biorepository which has yielded over 150 publications explicating MS pathogenesis and prognostic models. To meet the need to identify new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for MS and related diseases, she created the Translational Neuroimmunology Research Center (TNRC) at the Ann Romney Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital which encompasses a neuroimmunology laboratory group, clinical research and database team and bioinformatics-analytics group, with the goal of identifying new biomarkers, algorithms, and therapeutic targets with the goal of bench to bedside translation for neuroimmunological diseases. Dr. Chitnis has led several clinical trials in MS including recent phase III trials in pediatric MS published in the New England Journal of Medicine as well as phase I-IV trials in adult multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. She has published over 250 peer reviewed articles in the MS and neuroimmunological diseases field, and she has received funding awards from the Department of Defense, National MS Society, NIH, and other foundations to support her work.

    Steven A Greenberg, MD, MS


    Dr. Greenberg is a clinical neurologist and neuromuscular specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is an inventor and developer of therapeutic molecules, including the IFN-b inhibitor dazukibart in development for dermatomyositis and systemic lupus erythematosus, the selective cytotoxic T cell depleter ulviprubart in development for inclusion body myositis, and of earlier stage therapeutic programs in autoimmunity, allergy, and immuno-oncology. Dr. Greenberg received an A.B. degree in Mathematics from Princeton University, an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, an M.S. degree in Medical Informatics from MIT, and completed internship at MGH, neurology residency and neuromuscular disease fellowship at UCSF, and a bioinformatics fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital.

    Reisa Sperling, MD


    Dr. Reisa Sperling is a neurologist focused on the detection and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at the earliest detectable stage. Dr. Sperling is a Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment (CART) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Sperling is the co-Principal Investigator of the NIH funded Harvard Aging Brain Study, and the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trial Consortium (ACTC). Dr. Sperling chaired the 2011 NIA-Alzheimer’s Association workgroup to develop guidelines for the study of “Preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.” She co-led the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease (A4) Study, the first prevention trial is late onset preclinical (pre-symptomatic) AD, and LEARN Study, and currently co-leads the AHEAD 3-45 Study prevention trials. Dr. Sperling has published over 350 peer-reviewed articles, and has been named as one of the Highly-Cited Neuroscience Researchers for the past 9 years. Dr. Sperling received the 2015 Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology, a Lifetime Achievement Award from CTAD in 2022 and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.

    Will Renthal, MD, PhD

     

    Dr. Renthal is the Director of Research at the John R. Graham Headache Center. He completed his MD, PhD and neurology residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and joined Brigham and Women’s Hospital for his final year of residency and postgraduate training in headache medicine.

    He is board certified in neurology and provides patients with comprehensive headache care including advanced diagnostics and personalized treatment plans, which may include behavioral/complementary therapy, medication and/or procedures (e.g. nerve blocks, Botox).

    In addition to clinical care, Dr. Renthal conducts neuroscience and genetics research. His laboratory is interested in the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying migraine and chronic pain. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on his research.

    Omar Abudayyeh, PhD


    Omar Abudayyeh is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Investigator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General Brigham’s Gene and Cell Therapy Institute, and faculty member with the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. He directs the Abudayyeh-Gootenberg lab, which is developing next-generation gene editing, gene delivery, and synthetic biology technologies using protein engineering and artificial intelligence and applies them towards new therapeutics and the study of aging. He previously was a McGovern Fellow at MIT where he directed his own research group and before that was at Harvard Medical School and MIT as a graduate student in Feng Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute, where he earned a Ph.D. researching novel CRISPR enzymes for genome editing, therapeutics, and diagnostics. He is a pioneer in the gene editing space as an inventor on dozens of patents and patent applications relating to gene editing and diagnostic innovations, as well as over 30,000 citations on more than 45 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Nature, Science, and Cell. He is also co-founder of Sherlock Biosciences, Proof Diagnostics (acquired), and Tome Biosciences, which are commercializing CRISPR-based diagnostics and therapeutics, as well as other stealth starts ups in the gene and RNA therapy space, which have collectively raised hundreds of millions. Dr. Abudayyeh has been recognized as Technology Review Innovators Under 35, Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst, Endpoints 20 under 40 Next Generation of Biotech Leaders, 2022 Termeer Scholar, 2018 Forbes 30 under 30, Business Insider 30 under 30, a 2018 TEDMED Hive honoree, and a 2013 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. Dr. Abudayyeh graduated from MIT in 2012 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and biological engineering, where he was a Henry Ford II Scholar and a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar. He also spent two years studying towards an MD at Harvard Medical School.

    Jonathan Gootenberg, PhD


    Is the co-PI of the Abudayyeh-Gootenberg, a Member of the Faculty at Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Center for Vaccine and Virology Research, with affiliations with the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and the Department of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His lab explores new approaches that leverage programmability across biological scales–including new nucleic acid medicines, molecular tools, and machine learning methods–and applies them to the development of new therapeutics for genetic disease, cancer, and aging.

    As a leading member of the genome editing field, he published over 50 peer-reviewed articles with over 35,000 citations, and his work has resulted in over 30 patents or patent applications. His work has been translated into 5 companies that Dr. Gootenberg has co-founded, including Sherlock Biosciences, Proof Diagnostics (acquired), and Tome Biosciences. Before his position at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Gootenberg led an independent research group at MIT as a McGovern Fellow. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Biology from Harvard University, conducting research with Aviv Regev and Feng Zhang at the McGovern Institute and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and biological engineering at MIT. Dr. Gootenberg’s work has been recognized with awards such as Forbes 30 Under 30, Technology Review 35 Under 35, Endpoints 20 Under 40, the Termeer Foundation Scholarship, and the American Association for Aging New Investigator award.


    DIRECTIONS

    Marshall A. Wolf Conference Center

    Hale Building for Transformative Medicine (Hale BTM)

    From 60 Fenwood Road:

    Enter at 60 Fenwood Rd lobby entrance.

    STAIRS:

    Take the lobby staircase to the 2nd floor. Walk past the balcony overlooking the atrium and take the stairs on the left (Stair 2) to the 3rd floor. Once on the 3rd floor, exit the stairwell and take a right. The room is to your right through the double glass door, straight ahead.

    ELEVATOR:

    Take S Elevator to 3rd floor. Take a right out of the elevator. The room is past the stairwell, on your right through the double glass doors.

    Hale Cafe Atrium

    Hale Building for Transformative Medicine (Hale BTM)

    From 60 Fenwood Road:

    Enter at 60 Fenwood Rd lobby entrance.

    ELEVATOR:

    Take the S elevators to the 1st floor, and the atrium will be on your right. OR at the 60 Fenwood Rd lobby take the stairs up one flight to the 1st floor, and the open atrium will be on your left.

    STAIRS:

    Take the stairs up one flight to the 1st floor, and the open atrium will be on your left.

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