Advisors

Ralph Adolphs is a professor of psychology, neuroscience and biology at the California Institute of Technology. His laboratory works with a variety of clinical populations, including neurosurgical patients, individuals with rare brain lesions and people with autism, to elucidate the neural underpinnings…

Todd Anthony is a research associate at Boston Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. The Anthony Lab seeks to understand the control of stress-induced modulation of moods and behavioral states, particularly focusing on understanding the role of the…

Paola Arlotta is a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University. She is a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where she is co-director of the neuroscience program, an institute member at the Broad Institute, and…

Claudia Bagni is a professor and the director of the Department des Neurosciences Fondamentales (DNF) at the Universite de Lausanne. Her laboratory works on cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders, with a particular focus on disorders affecting synaptic function (i.e., synaptopathies),…

Jeffery Barrett is the chief scientific officer and director at Genomics plc. He was the former director of Open Targets and a former group leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Barrett built an academic career around using large-scale genomics and genetics to…

Alexis Battel is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, where she uses modeling and machine-learning methods to understand the impact of human genetic variation on complex traits, from cellular phenotypes to health and disease.

Esther Becker graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 2000 with an M.Sc. degree in medical biology. Subsequently, she performed her doctorate research with Professor Azad Bonni at Harvard Medical School, focusing on the signaling mechanisms that regulate apoptosis in the nervous…

Somer Bishop is a clinical psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Bishop’s research and clinical interests focus on the assessment of social-communication…

Maja Bucan is a professor of genetics and the co-director of the Autism Spectrum Program of Excellence at the University of Pennsylvania. Her laboratory uses genetics, genomics and family-based studies in humans to understand the genetic basis of behavioral and psychiatric disorders.…

Joseph Buxbaum is the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Research Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, the head of the laboratory of molecular neuropsychiatry, vice chair for research in the Department of Psychiatry, and director of the Seaver…

Moses V. Chao received his B.A. from Pomona College and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in biochemistry. Chao is presently a professor of cell biology, physiology & neuroscience and psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine.

Tony Charman is Chair in Clinical Child Psychology at the Department of Psychology of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry.

Anjen Chenn is a physician-scientist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in the Department of Pathology. Chenn’s research lab works on mechanisms regulating the development of the cerebral cortex. They are interested in factors that regulate the production and differentiation of neurons…

Anne Churchland is a professor of neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Laura Colgin is an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. Colgin’s work aims to uncover the mechanisms and neural circuits controlling different types of synchronized rhythms within the brain and to understand the functional significance of these…

Christopher Cowan is professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). He also holds the William E. Murray SmartState Endowed Chair in Neuroscience. He earned his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. from…

Ann Marie Craig is professor of psychiatry and Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology at the University of British Columbia and is a member of the Royal Society of Canada. She began her studies on synapses as a postdoctoral fellow with Gary Banker…

Charles Craik is a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is also the founder and director of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program.

Graeme Davis is the Morris Hertzstein Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco and has been co-director for the Neurobiology Course at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, for the last several years.

Jun Ding is an assistant professor of neurosurgery and neurology at Stanford University. The scientific goal of the laboratory is to understand the circuits and neural computations involved in generating voluntary movement, with a particular focus on cortico-thalamo-basal ganglia networks. Using electrophysiology,…

Guoping Feng is the James and Patricia Poitras Professor in Neuroscience at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a member of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric…

Gerald Fischbach joined the Simons Foundation in early 2006 to oversee the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. Formerly, he was dean of the faculty of health sciences and of medicine at Columbia University, and director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders…

Gord Fishell is a developmental neurobiologist interested in how the architecture of brain circuits are assembled, with a special focus on the diverse populations of inhibitory interneurons that are found in both pallial and subpallial telencephalon. His lab identified that the origins…

Richard Gibbs is the founder and director of the Baylor College of Medicine – Human Genome Sequencing Center (BCM-HGSC), as well as a professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics and the programs in Integrative Molecular and Biomedical Sciences and…

Charles Gilbert’s lab studies the visual cortex, including cortical areas mediating object recognition and perceptual tasks and the molecular mechanisms underlying experience-dependent changes in cortical circuits. Gilbert and his colleagues use electrophysiology, imaging, and molecular approaches to understand the mechanisms of adult…

From 2014 to 2015, Joseph Gleeson was the Leon Hess Professor and head of the Laboratory for Pediatric Brain Disease at The Rockefeller University and director of Mendelian sequencing at the New York Genome Center. He relocated to San Diego in 2015…

Zach W. Hall is a neurobiologist with an illustrious career that has included acting as director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) from 1994 to 1997 and serving as the first president of the California Institute of Regenerative…

David J. Heeger is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University (NYU). He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a research scientist…

Kimberly Huber is a professor of neuroscience, a Southwestern Medical Foundation Scholar in Biomedical Research and chair of the neuroscience graduate training program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX. She is also director of a National Institutes…

Stephen M. Kanne is the executive director of the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders and a professor in the Department of Health Psychology at the University of Missouri.

Nicholas (Nico) Katsanis obtained his bachelor’s degree in genetics from the University College London in 1993 and his doctorate degree from Imperial College London in 1997. While at Imperial College London, he worked with Elizabeth Fisher on the genetics of Down syndrome.…

Kamran Khodakhah is the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience Professor, as well as a professor within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology. He is also the chair of the Dominick P. Purpura…

Peter Kind is director of the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain; co-director of the Patrick Wild Centre for Research into Autism, Fragile X Syndrome and Intellectual Disability; and professor of developmental neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. He is also associate…

Arnold Kriegstein is the John Bowes Distinguished Professor in Stem Cell and Tissue Biology and founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is also…

Story Landis is a neurobiologist and former director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), having worked at the NINDS since 1995 and directed the institute from 2003 until her retirement in…

Suzanne Leal is a professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics and the director of the Center for Statistical Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, as well as an adjunct professor in the Department of Statistics at Rice University and…

Catherine Lord is the George Tarjan Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Education at the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Liqun Luo is a professor at Stanford University and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Luo’s laboratory is interested in understanding how neuronal circuits are precisely wired during development and how this organizational precision allows the processing and production of…

Ian Maze is an assistant professor of neuroscience and pharmacology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Maze’s laboratory focuses on histone regulation in the mammalian central nervous system. Using a multidisciplinary and integrative approach involving biochemical, biophysical, physiological and…

Lin Mei is interested in synapses, their formation and functions. His lab has revealed molecular mechanisms of the assembly and maintenance of synapses, including the neuromuscular junction, a synapse that controls muscle contraction. His lab has identified novel biomarkers for neuromuscular disorders,…

The central theme of Sophie Molholm’s research is a translational one, applying methods and knowledge from her work in basic research to derive better understanding of the neurobiological bases of brain disorders. She uses psychophysics and electrophysiology in conjunction with cutting-edge analytical…

Scott O. Murray is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on cognitive neuroscience approaches to perception and attention with a particular emphasis on the role of context in early visual processing.

Charles A. Nelson III is a professor of pediatrics and neuroscience and a professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a professor of education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Elsewhere at Harvard, he holds…

Ben Philpot is a Kenan Distinguished Professor in the Neuroscience Center and Department of Cell Biology & Physiology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.

Dalila Pinto’s laboratory focuses on identifying genes and biological pathways underlying neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia. Using assessments of genetic, epigenetic and clinical data, along with high-throughput experimental and bioinformatics methodologies, the Pinto laboratory aims to identify novel risk…

Martin Raff is a professor emeritus at the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at University College London. He received his medical training from McGill University and residency training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, followed by a residency…

Srinivas Rao is the chief scientific officer for Cypress Bioscience, Inc.

John Rubenstein is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. The goal of his laboratory’s research is to elucidate fundamental mechanisms that regulate development of the forebrain, with a focus on the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia. The studies in…

Douglas Ruderfer is an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The lab has a strong focus on neuropsychiatric disorders, using genomics and pharmacogenomics, and developing analytical tools to elucidate the genetic architecture of these diseases. The laboratory also works…

Bernardo Sabatini’s laboratory seeks to uncover the mechanisms of synapse and circuit plasticity that permit new behaviors to be learned and refined. His laboratory studies the developmental changes that occur after birth that make learning possible as well as the circuit changes…

Jonathan Sebat is the director of the Beyster Institute for Psychiatric Genomics, where he leads an interdisciplinary team in the clinical and genomic analysis of patient cohorts at the University of California, San Diego and Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego.

Pawan Sinha is a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, and his…

Stelios Smirnakis is an associate neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

Research in Hongjun Song’s laboratory focuses on understanding mechanisms regulating neural stem cells and neurogenesis in the mammalian brain and how these processes affect neural function. Song is interested in the endogenous function of adult hippocampal neurogenesis and exploiting this system as…

Shafali Spurling Jeste is a behavioral child neurologist specializing in autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. She is an associate professor in psychiatry, neurology and pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine, the director of the…

Elie Stahl is an assistant professor in the Center for Statistical Genetics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and is currently a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Stahl laboratory develops and applies novel genetic…

Beth Stevens received her Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2003 from the University of Maryland College Park and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 2008. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Smith Family Award…

Lorenz Studer is the director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The laboratory utilizes advances in stem cell biology to model human diseases and develop new therapies for degenerative diseases and cancers. Studer’s laboratory has a…

David Sulzer is a professor of psychiatry, neurology and pharmacology at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York Psychiatric Institute. His lab conducts research devoted to understanding the synapses of the basal ganglia, particularly in investigating how synapses of the cortex,…

The main focus of Helen Tager-Flusberg’s research for more than four decades has been on defining the neurocognitive and developmental bases of the language, communication and associated social-cognitive deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders (including developmental language disorder…

Michael Talkowski received his Ph.D. in human genetics and trained in genomics as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Broad Institute.

Gina Turrigiano received her B.A. from Reed College in 1984 and her Ph.D. from University of California, San Diego in 1990. She trained as a postdoc with Eve Marder at Brandeis University before joining the faculty in 1994, where she is now…

Linda Van Aelst is a professor of cancer research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Van Aelst’s research focuses on understanding cellular communication signals and how they control a cell’s shape, what a cell does and how it interacts with other cells. Her…

Kai Wang is an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Wang’s laboratory utilizes computational and bioinformatics methods to identify and prioritize disease-relevant human genetic mutations. Wang also utilizes bioinformatics approaches…

Hynek Wichterle is an associate professor of pathology and cell biology, of neuroscience, and of rehabilitation and regenerative medicine at Columbia University. Wichterle’s laboratory develops methods for the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into a variety of motor neuron subtypes in order…

Trained in human genetics, Huntington Willard has focused his research, educational, and leadership interests at the crossroads of basic genetics and genome biology and their impact on society and the practice of medicine. His research group's efforts on the function of the…

Mark Zylka received his B.S. in biochemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As an undergraduate, he was named a Barry Goldwater National scholar, and he spent three summers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an Intramural Research Training…