Leaderboard

As a neurosurgeon, I feel deeply dissatisfied with the treatment available to treat our patients. We certainly need to increase our therapeutic arsenal. I believe that this dissatisfaction is the driving force behind my work (I believe that many colleagues share this feeling) I currently have 3 lines of work and research 1. neurooncology: we look for therapeutic targets for childhood tumors that are more prevalent in pediatrics, such as medulloblastoma and ependymoma 2. cerebral palsy and movement disorders (especially in children). Children with cerebral palsy have many problems with locomotion and motility (especially spasticity and dystonia). The most commonly used treatments today (drugs and surgeries such as DBS (deep brain stimulation) still need to be greatly improved. My team is researching new interventions in the connectome of these children, such as new targets, microfocused ultrasound and different brain stimulation techniques. 3.Education: training new generations is a fundamental factor for the development of neuroscience, as well as ensuring a healthy environment where minds can offer their best. My passion is to help new neurosurgeons and healthcare students embrace neuroscience in a happy and responsible way

Wow where to begin? My interest in neuroscience has always been conceptually broad – how does the brain perform the computations it does for everyday life functions, and how do these computations change with development, learning, and aging? Over the years of graduate school and post-doctoral fellowship, I’ve conducted research experiments using various behavioral, experimental, and computational techniques in humans and animals (ferrets). Using visual and auditory experimental paradigms, I investigated the mechanisms of perception, learning, memory, and how these change with aging using psychoacoustics, eye tracking, EEG, fMRI, and neurophysiology. As a program analyst contractor [KGS] supporting the achievement of the research goals of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s, I get to take a bird’s eye view of the entire neuroscientific research landscape. In my current role, I prioritize the development of the programs and infrastructure to achieve these goals. My activities range from development of targeted funding opportunities to address the gaps and opportunities in the research landscape, improving the rigor and reproducibility of funded and published research, participating in policy and program workgroups and more. I love this role; while I had no idea such roles existed for much of my own career, in this position I combine scientific expertise with communication and analytic skills to serve the public and the community I work with. Working on AlzPED, the Alzheimer’s Preclinical Efficacy Database (https://alzped.nia.nih.gov/) has been particularly fulfilling. In addition to being a curator, I also work with partner organizations to widely implement the adoption of rigorous experimental design as well as provide the research community with a platform to publish (as a preprint with a citable DOI) their negative findings which can be traditionally hard to publish.