SFARI

Oscar Marín is a professor of neuroscience at King’s College London, U.K. He joined King’s College in 2014 and is the director of the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Stephan Sanders trained as a pediatric physician in the United Kingdom before pursuing a career in genomics and bioinformatics research as a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Matthew State at Yale University. In 2014, he moved to the University of California, San Francisco to start his own lab in the Department of Psychiatry.

Pamela Ventola is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the Yale Child Study Center. Her clinical work and research program focus on behavioral treatment for ASD, specifically Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT).

Lilia Iakoucheva joined the psychiatry department of the University of California, San Diego, as an assistant professor in 2010. She became a professor in 2022. Her current research focuses on improving the understanding of the molecular basis of neurodevelopmental conditions, and she is applying her deep knowledge of proteins to this problem. The goal of her laboratory is to discover pathways that connect genes carrying autism risk mutations by building comprehensive gene expression and protein interaction networks for autism candidate genes and their alternatively spliced isoforms. Her lab uses patient-derived brain organoid and animal models combined with genome-wide transcriptomic and proteomic approaches to investigate functional impact of genetic mutations in these conditions.

Joseph Gleeson is the Rady Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, where his lab is focused on causes and treatments for pediatric brain disorders.

Shafali Spurling Jeste is a behavioral child neurologist specializing in autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. She is professor of pediatrics and neurology at the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine and the Las Madrinas Chair, chief of neurology and co-director of the Neurological Institute at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).

During his postdoctoral training, and as an independent laboratory head at the University of Queensland, Australia, Michael Piper has focused on fundamental aspects of neural development within the rodent brain, namely how neural stem cells produce postmitotic neurons and glia, and how these neurons subsequently form appropriate connections that facilitate neuronal function.

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, one of which (anti-LRP4 antibody) is now used widely in the clinic to diagnose myasthenia gravis.

Anna Penn, M.D., Ph.D., is a clinical neonatologist and translational neuroscientist at Children’s National Health System in Washington, DC. She is an associate professor of pediatrics in the Fetal Medicine Institute, Neonatology and the Center for Neuroscience Research. In addition, she directs a new multidisciplinary perinatal neuroprotection program aimed at training the next generation of clinicians and scientists to prevent preterm brain injury.