SFARI

Mark Blumberg has investigated a diversity of topics in developmental behavioral neuroscience, including sleep, sensorimotor processing, thermoregulation, cardiorespiratory physiology and ultrasonic vocalizations. What binds his research interests together is a desire to understand how developmental and behavioral processes unfold through time. Overall, Blumberg’s work embraces a process-oriented view of development, is anchored in behavioral analysis and considers the bidirectional interactions of behavior and physiology.

Relevant to his current SFARI grant, Blumberg’s research over the past 15 years has focused increasingly on the contributions of spontaneous movements to sensorimotor development; his group has generated the most comprehensive understanding to date of cortical and subcortical infant brain activity and its state-dependent modulation. To enable this progress, Blumberg’s lab has been at the forefront of developing methods for neurophysiological recordings in unanesthetized infant rodents. Blumberg has had continuous National Institutes of Health funding since 1994, including an Independent Scientist Award (2002-2012) and a Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award (2014-present).

Beyond his empirical work, he has gained a broad perspective of the field by serving as editor-in-chief of Behavioral Neuroscience, co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience (Oxford University Press, 2010) and also co-editing a collection of essays on developmental systems and the emergence of complex behaviors (WIREs Cognitive Science, 2016). Finally, in an effort to communicate science to a broader audience, Blumberg has written three books of popular science, including Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us about Development and Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth (Harvard University Press, 2001

Jennifer Valdivia Espino is the student and fellow program manager for the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) and the Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations. She joined the foundation in 2022. She is responsible for unifying programs that support the professional development of early-career scientists and promote the inclusion of scientists from diverse backgrounds into the study of autism, systems and computational neuroscience, and healthy brain aging. Valdivia Espino previously served as the assistant director for the Graduate Program in Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She holds an M.S. in population health sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an alum of the Pennsylvania State University McNair Scholars Program and the University of Wisconsin-Madison SciMed Graduate Research Scholars Program.

Ray W. Turner received a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of British Columbia Vancouver in 1985 and completed two postdoctoral training periods at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, and at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He became an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1991 and is now a professor in the Hotchkiss Brain Institute in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

The Turner lab focuses on electrophysiology and biophysics of ion channels in cerebellum and hippocampal regions using rodent in vitro models to assess the basis of circuit function underlying behaviors. The lab uses techniques that range from molecular biology and protein biochemistry through imaging to assess the molecular nature of interactions between ion channels that are assessed in terms of how they govern cell excitability and synaptic plasticity in in vitro slice preparations or dissociated cell cultures.

Work has focused on a new ion channel complex formed between Cav3 calcium (T-type) and Kv4 potassium (A-type) channels expressed in granule cells of cerebellum. Recent work shows that the Cav3-Kv4 complex is central to long-term potentiation (LTP) of mossy fiber input to granule cells. Their work now establishes that FMRP is a central component of the Cav3-Kv4 complex that modulates its properties and is necessary for LTP. Turner’s SFARI-funded work will examine the ability to restore a loss of LTP in Fmrp1 knockout mice and reduce aberrant behaviors in this model of fragile X syndrome using a combination of in vitro recordings and behavioral analyses.

Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg is a microbiologist and translational scientist with extensive experience in establishing and leading multidisciplinary teams to advance innovation in complex areas such as microarray technologies, diabetes and the microbiome.

As the clinical director for Autism BrainNet, Carolyn Komich-Hare's primary responsibility involves working directly with donor families, the informatics team and SFARI leadership with the goal of providing researchers (utilizing postmortem brain tissue) with the richest possible phenotypic information. Komich-Hare is also responsible for working closely with Autism BrainNet's outreach team to coordinate volunteer opportunities for donor families. Finally, Komich-Hare is first on call for coordinating the donation process by responding to Autism BrainNet's 24/7 hotline and ensuring that each donation is safely transported to the closest site.

Yazdanbakhsh is currently the principal investigator of grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI). He has 50 peer-reviewed publications, three book chapters, and numerous conference presentations and invited talks, is a member of the Vision Science Society and the Society for Neuroscience, and serves as a peer reviewer for many neuroscience-related journals.

Ryan Thomas Ash is an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.