LUNDBECK FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Scientific Programme Manager
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- Senior Communications Partner
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- Senior Vice President, Strategic Investments
Arthur Konnerth studied medicine at the LMU Munich, obtained his doctoral degree at the MPI of Psychiatry Munich and his habilitation at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He was full professor and director of the Institutes of Physiology at the Saarland University and held later similar positions at the TUM and LMU. From 2005 to 2018 he was the Friedrich-Schiedel Professor and director of the Institute of Neuroscience of the TUM. Currently he is a Hertie-Senior-Professor for Neuroscience, He is member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the Academia Europaea and of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and a Carl-von-Linde Senior Fellow of the TUM-IAS.
His current research is focused on the development and application of methods that allow a quantitative understanding of function and dysfunction of neurons and circuits in the intact brain. He and his team pioneered in vivo two-photon imaging of cortical circuits with single cell resolution. More recently, they have developed the LOTOS (low power temporal oversampling) method of high-resolution two-photon calcium imaging and used it for the functional mapping of dendritic spines in vivo. These approaches are used in the lab for the exploration of behavior-determined synaptic signaling and dendritic signal integration in neurons of defined brain circuits. A major goal of his research is a better understanding of the cellular and circuit mechanisms of learning and memory in the healthy brain, as well as the pathophysiology underlying the impairment of cognition and memory in Alzheimer's disease.
Job Titles:
- Scientific Programme Manager - Neurotorium
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner Lundbeckfonden BioCapital
Job Titles:
- Head of Division / Ludwig - Maximilians University
Christian Haass graduated in molecular biology at the University of Heidelberg. He was a postdoc and assistant professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School in the Center for Neurological Diseases (1990-1995). In 1995 he was appointed as an associate professor of molecular biology at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim. Since 1999 he is the head of the division of Biochemistry of the Biomedical Research Center (BMC) of the Ludwig-Maximilians University and speaker of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Munich. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Leopoldina, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Christian Haass' research is concerned with the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration with a strong focus on Alzheimer's disease and Frontotemporal Dementia. Using interdisciplinary approaches, he investigates the pathomechanisms, which lead to the deposition of insoluble disease characterizing neurotoxic protein aggregates such as amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Very recently he developed a strong interest in neuroinflammation and in translation of his findings from fundamental research to patients with dementia.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Developmental Neuroscience / Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at Cambridge University
Christine Holt received a B.Sc. Hons degree in Biological Sciences in 1977 from the University of Sussex and in 1982 was awarded a Ph.D. degree in Zoology from King's College London. She did her postdoctoral training in the Physiology Department at Oxford University and in the Biology Department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). In 1992, she joined the faculty at UCSD and became a tenured Associate Professor in 1996. In 1997, she moved to the University of Cambridge as a Lecturer in the Anatomy Department and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. In 2003 she became the Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience (PDN) at Cambridge.
Christine Holt is interested in how connections are first formed in the brain and how they are maintained over the long-term. In the vertebrate visual system, neurons in the eye extend axons over a long distance to find their synaptic targets in the brain. The goal of her research has been to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms that guide and maintain these axons. Her work led to the demonstration that local protein synthesis and degradation are a required part of growth cone guidance, a highly original step-change in our understanding of axon growth.
More recently, she has shown that local axonal protein synthesis is necessary for axon survival, suggesting that mature axons require a continuous supply of locally synthesized proteins for their maintenance. The ability to make new proteins on-site and on-demand in the most remote cellular compartments of neurons, such as axons, growth cones and presynaptic terminals, provides adaptability and resilience.
Karen Steel received her first degree from Leeds University and her PhD from University College London for her investigations of the inner ear in several deaf mouse mutants. She is currently Professor of Sensory Function at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London. She is a Fellow of The Royal Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Karen Steel's primary research interest is the genetics of deafness, using mouse mutants to gain access to the molecules involved in normal development and function. She has focussed on identifying genes underlying deafness and understanding the molecular and physiological basis for the dysfunction. Her group, together with many collaborators, has published phenotypic descriptions of over 80 different mouse mutants representing 36 loci, and they have identified 38 mutations in 22 different genes by positional cloning. For several of these, she has collaborated with human geneticists to identify mutations in the same genes in humans with deafness. Analysis of these new mouse mutants showed that a very wide range of mechanisms can cause deafness, including middle ear malformations, middle ear inflammation, inner ear malformation, sensory hair cell developmental defects, homeostatic failure, and stalled maturation.
Despite the common assumption that hearing loss is due to sensory hair cell degeneration, analysis of this large panel of mutants shows that degeneration is an epiphenomenon, not a primary cause of deafness. Each new mutation and gene identified adds valuable information about critical processes in the auditory system, but it is likely that there will be over 500 genes required for normal hearing and identifying these is a key first step in constructing the molecular pathways and networks involved. For this reason, gene discovery remains a core goal of the research. Progressive loss of auditory function with age is a major problem in the human population. Hearing loss is profoundly isolating, both socially and economically, and has a major impact on the quality of life of those affected. The current research in Karen Steel's laboratory aims to understand the reasons for age-related decline in auditory function using mouse models with progressive loss of hearing ability.
Christine Petit graduated in medicine from Pierre et Marie Curie University (Paris VI) and in basic biological sciences, genetics and biochemistry from Orsay University (Paris XI). She received her PhD at the Institut Pasteur. In 2002, she was appointed Professor at College de France where she holds the chair of Genetics and Cellular Physiology. She is currently the head of the Genetics and Physiology of Hearing laboratory at Institut Pasteur. Professor Petit is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, USA, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Christine Petit is a geneticist and a neurobiologist with a particular interest in deafness and hearing, who is internationally renowned for her work on human hereditary sensory disorders. She has pioneered research in this field, revealing the molecular physiology of the cochlea and discovering new physiological properties of this sensory organ. She initiated the assessment of the molecular mechanisms underlying sound processing in the peripheral auditory system via the genes involved in deafness. She discovered more than twenty such genes, 90% of them encoding previously unknown proteins.
Through in-depth, multidisciplinary analysis, involving engineered deaf mouse mutants, Christine Petit and her colleagues have unravelled the molecular mechanisms involved in the development and the functioning of the hair bundle (the sensory antenna of the hair cells), the synaptic connections between hair cells and auditory nerve fibres, the formation of the tectorial membrane which transfers the sensory stimulation to the hair bundle, and the maintenance of the ionic composition of the fluid surrounding hair cells. By elucidating the pathogenesis of dozens of forms of deafness, including the most frequent form caused by a connexin defect, her discoveries have had a major impact on daily medical practice, regarding both diagnosis and therapeutic decisions.
The current focus of Christine Petit's laboratory is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying sound processing in the auditory system and how hearing impairment arise when these mechanisms become defective. The hair bundle, which plays a central role in sound processing, is a main focus of her research. How it is shaped, how basic functions such as mechanotransduction, frequency tuning, waveform distortion and suppressive masking are achieved, how the interaction between these functions is ensured and how its properties are coupled to its cytoarchitecture are some of the key issues that she is addressing.
Recently, she has extended her study of sound processing to the central auditory system. Her new research aims include the development of novel approaches to prevent and to treat hearing impairment.
Job Titles:
- Professor and Co - Director / Princeton University
David W. Tank obtained a B.S., Physics and Mathematics from Case Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University. Today he is the Henry L. Hillman professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University and Co-Director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. He also directs the Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics. At the Simons Foundation, he is the Director of the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain.
His research interests include the measurement, analysis, and modeling of neural circuit dynamics. At Bell Laboratories he contributed to the development of attractor network models of neural decision-making, the development of functional MRI imaging, and the development of cellular resolution optical imaging of neural dynamics. More recently, his work has focused on the mechanisms of persistent neural activity and the development and application of rodent virtual reality systems combined with large-scale optical recording and electrophysiology to study neural circuit dynamics during navigation. My laboratory is also involved in the general development of methodologies and instrumentation that can provide measurements of chemical and electrical dynamics of neurons in vivo. Considerable progress has been made in the adaptation of two-photon laser scanning microscopy for the study of calcium concentration dynamics in dendrites and nerve terminals in intact neural circuits, including the mammalian neocortex. In the future his lab hopes to further develop and use these methods to study chemical and electrical changes in neurons during persistent neural activity.
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor of Genetics at Edinburgh University
Sir Adrian Bird was born and grew up in England. He received his PhD from Edinburgh University in 1970 for describing how the epigenetic mechanism underlying DNA methylation can affect the function and expression of various genes.
Bird is now a professor of genetics at Edinburgh University, where he has spent most of his career. Adrian Bird is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014.
In 1992, Adrian Bird's group discovered the MECP2 gene, which Huda Zoghbi later showed to be the cause of Rett syndrome. He showed that together with other proteins, MECP2 in neurons binds to methylated DNA sequences, thus ‘switching off' certain genes. This is vital for maintaining normal neuronal function.
Adrian Bird's group designed the first, and most common, mouse model of Rett syndrome. Since the neurons are not destroyed but merely degenerate in individuals with Rett syndrome, he decided to use the mouse model to investigate whether restoring the function of the MECP2 gene would enable the cells to work again.
Dr Huda Zoghbi is Professor of genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.
Huda Zoghbi was born and grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. She enrolled in medical school in 1975. However, when civil war erupted that same year, she and her family moved to Texas where her sister lived.
The plan was to move back to Lebanon, but the war escalated and, instead, she enrolled at Meharry Medical College in Nashville where she completed her medical studies. She wanted to become a cardiologist. However, after an internship at Texas Children's Hospital, she became fascinated by the brain and began to specialise in this field. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1983, Huda read a scientific article about Rett syndrome. This was to become a milestone in her career.
Shortly afterwards, she met two developmentally disabled patients at Texas Children's Hospital and Blue Bird Circle Clinic, and they reminded Huda of the article. Within the space of two weeks, she had officially diagnosed her first Rett patients.
She then decided to go through some of the hospital's journals and found a further five children who were suffering from Rett syndrome but had been misdiagnosed. Her work with the sick children inspired her not merely to make the lives of these patients and their parents more bearable but to identify the underlying cause of the disorder. However, as a clinician, she did not have any real research experience.
She, therefore, spent the following years enhancing her genetic research skills and studying other, more common neurological disorders. Over the years, Professor Zoghbi's research team gathered a large group of Rett patients, including three families.
Ed Boyden completed his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and a Master of Engineering at MIT. He completed PhD studies in Neuroscience at Stanford University. He joined MIT as an Assistant Professor in 2007 and is now a Professor in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering, and an HHMI investigator.
Ed Boyden's group at MIT develops tools for analyzing and engineering brain circuits. Driven by the goal of optical control of targeted neurons, in 2000 he and Deisseroth began to discuss using opsins to manipulate neural activity, and in early 2004 they established a collaboration with Nagel and Bamberg that led to a successful demonstration of opsin-mediated neural activation.
His group continues to introduce optogenetic tool classes into neuroscience, including halorhodopsins (2007) and bacteriorhodopsins (2010) for optical neural silencing. His lab optimizes these opsins for novel neuroscientific applications, and develops complementary technologies such as scalable neural recording technologies, expansion microscopy, which enables complex biological systems to be imaged with nanoscale precision; robotic methods for directed evolution that are yielding new synthetic biology reagents for dynamic imaging of physiological signals; novel methods of noninvasive focal brain stimulation; and new methods of nanofabrication using shrinking of patterned materials to create nanostructures with ordinary lab equipment. He distributes these tools as freely as possible to the scientific community, and also apply them to the systematic analysis of brain computations, aiming to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of brain function, and yielding new, ground-truth therapeutic strategies for neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Erin Schuman was born in 1963 in California. After completing her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Southern California, she received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Princeton University. She conducted postdoctoral studies in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. In 1993, she was appointed to the Biology Faculty at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). From 1997-2009, Erin Schuman was appointed Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In 2009, she moved with her husband Gilles Laurent to Frankfurt, Germany to design and found the new Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.
Erin Schuman has a long-standing interest in molecular and cell biological processes that control protein synthesis and degradation in neurons and their synapses.
Ernst Bamberg received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Basel in 1971. In 1993 he was full Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt. He is currently Director Emeritus in the Department of Biophysical Chemistry, Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
The focus of Ernst Bamberg's research is the functional analysis of membrane proteins with biophysical methods such as electrophysiology, spectroscopy and structural methods for a deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms of these proteins. His research focus lies on microbial rhodopsins, the light gated ion channels (channelrhodopsins) and the light driven ion pumps, which are used as optogenetic tools for the light control of electrically excitable cells. The goal of these studies is the development of improved tools with respect to light sensitivity, speed and ion selectivity in order to make them more applicable to the brain. Within an international consortium the "new" rhodopsins are used for the recovery of vision on blind animals with a biomedical perspective.
Georg Nagel studied biology and biophysics at the University of Konstanz, Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt in 1988, working at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. Currently, he is Full professor at University of Würzburg, Germany.
Research in Georg Nagel's lab aims to understand the electrical properties of microbial photoreceptors by expression in animal cells. With this method he discovered the function of light-gated cation channels from the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which he named channelrhodopsins: Channelrhodopsin-1 (ChR1) and ChR2. He demonstrated a strong, light-induced membrane depolarization after expression of ChR2 in human (HEK293) and other cells. Since his discovery of the channelrhodopsins he collaborated with neuroscientists who demonstrated light-induced action potentials and light-controlled behaviour of transgenic animals.
Job Titles:
- Professor and Director / University of Oxford
Gero Miesenböck studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck in his native Austria and did postdoctoral research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Currently, he is Waynflete Professor of Physiology & Director, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Research in Gero Miesenböck's lab seeks to identify elementary neural circuits that perform fundamental operations, such as integrating information over time, applying decision thresholds, computing error signals, and storing memories. Much of this work is done in fruit flies, where principles of brain function with direct relevance to human health can be dissected with unparalleled precision. Optogenetic control has been a key enabling technology in his research. It has allowed his group to link activity in defined neuronal populations causally to the expression of behavior, delineate how neurons are wired into circuits, and test ideas about how these circuits work.
Job Titles:
- Senior Communications Advisor
Graham Collingridge obtained his undergraduate degree in Pharmacology from the University of Bristol, UK in 1977 and a PhD from the School of Pharmacy (now UCL) in London, UK in 1980. Today, Graham Collingridge is the Director of the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases (CRND), a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto, and a Senior Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto. In 1998 he was elected a Founder Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and in 2001 he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019.
Professor Collingridge's research focuses on the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in health and disease, in particular, understanding synaptic plasticity in molecular terms and how pathological alterations in these processes may lead to major brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease.
György Buzsáki was born in Hungary and he graduated (M.D.) from the University of Pecs in 1974. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Academy of Sciences, Budapest in 1984. Currently he is Biggs Professor of Neuroscience, NYU School of Medicine .
György Buzsáki has pioneered the experimental exploration of how coordinated, rhythmic neuronal activity serves physiological functions in the cerebral cortex, and in particular, how information is exchanged between the hippocampus and neocortex. Using multi-site recording in behaving animals, he identified the cellular and synaptic basis of theta gamma oscillations and sharp waves with associated fast oscillations, their relationship to each other and to behaviour and sleep. He discovered several novel inhibitory cell types in the hippocampus and established the role of the GABAergic basket cells in theta, gamma and ripple oscillations.
Through cutting edge intradendritic and somatic recordings in vivo from identified cells, he defined the cellular contributions of neuronal circuits to oscillatory activity and provided a theoretical basis for their role in behaviour. The results of these wide-ranging experiments led to his most influential work, the two-stage model of memory trace consolidation: the neocortex-mediated information processing during learning transiently modifies hippocampal networks, followed by reactivation and consolidation of these memory traces during later hippocampal sharp wave bursts.
He has also demonstrated that in the absence of environmental signals, the hippocampal and prefrontal cortical circuits continuously generate self-organized assembly sequences of neuronal activity. Such internally generated sequences have long been thought to be the basis of cognitive functions. Overall, Buzsaki has been constantly seeking a deeper understanding of the cognitive powers of the cerebral cortex and has pioneered some of the most difficult approaches necessary to address these questions.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs
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- Senior Vice President, Grants & Prizes, Director of Science
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- Professor and Chief Physician / University of Copenhagen
Jes Olesen studied at the University at Copenhagen and defended his doctoral thesis on human brain blood flow there. His neurological education included a residency at Cornell Medical School, New York, and a volunteer period at the National Hospital Queen Square, London. He founded and for many years led the Danish Headache Center where he is still an attending physician. He is also a professor of neurology at the University of Copenhagen and a chief physician at the Danish Headache Center, Rigshospitalet Glostrup, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Jes Olesen is the father of the International Headache Classification and has identified several signalling mechanisms in migraine leading to new drug targets and registered drugs.
In his thesis he showed for the first time in humans that physical activity increased blood flow in the relevant brain area. The relation between brain function and brain blood flow has subsequently developed to an avenue of science but Jes Olesen did not pursue that path. Instead he first showed that cortical spreading depression is the likely physiologic mechanism of the migraine aura. Next, he developed a human provocation model and showed the crucial importance of nitric oxide, calcitonin-gene related peptide and pituitary adenylate cyclase activating peptide in migraine mechanisms. Likewise, an increase in second messengers cyclic guanylyl monophosphate and cyclic adenylyl monophosphate activated migraine mechanisms. More recently he continues his work in animal models of migraine and in the exploration of migraine genetics. Along with his scientific work he has also initiated and chaired the International Classification of Headache Disorders and has been the prime mover organizing the European Federation of Neurological Society and the European Brain Council.
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- Scientific Programme Manager
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- Chairman / University College London / John Hardy
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- Vice President and Executive Directo / Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics
Karel Svoboda graduated from Cornell University with a BA in Physics and from Harvard University with a PhD in Biophysics. He was a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories and a principal investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He was a Senior Group Leader at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus. Currently he is the Vice President and Executive Director of the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).
Karel Svoboda's work is focused on the structure, function and plasticity of cortical circuits in behaving mice, mainly in the context of tactile sensation and decision-making based on tactile evidence. By recording from and manipulating defined cell types, his lab analyzes the information flow in cortical circuits. Current areas of investigation include: i) the neural code underlying haptic sensation in the somatosensory cortex at the level of individual spikes; ii) the mechanisms of motor planning, short-term memory, and movement execution in the motor cortex and motor thalamus; iii) development of new optical, molecular, and behavioral methods for systems neuroscience.
Job Titles:
- Digital Communications Advisor
Lars Edvinsson trained at Lund University Medical Faculty and graduated as MD with PhD in 1980. He became Professor of Internal Medicine at Lund University and senior consultant at the University Hospital in Lund in 2002. He is also the founder of the Glostrup Research Park and has been its leader for the last 15 years. He is also president of The International Headache Society and Professor in Clinical Pharmacology at Copenhagen University.
He is a leading expert in the field of cerebral circulation and migraine. He has been a major contributor to what is known about the roles of the cerebral vasculature in health and in stroke and primary headaches. Working with Peter Goadsby, he identified calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) as a key transmitter in the trigeminal pain pathway and which is selectively released during a migraine attack. Based on his findings he proposed that CGRP may be of central importance in cerebral blood flow and migraine.
Professor Edvinsson and his group have contributed numerous basic research and clinical insights that have enabled the successful translation of CGRP drugs from bench to clinic. He is currently studying the female bias in migraine. Recently he showed that the trigeminal CGRP containing neurons are equipped with receptors for estrogen and oxytocin, and they may hence be regulated by the dynamic changes in levels of these hormones in females. Typically, both hormones drop just prior to menstruation and this may be a trigger for migraine attacks. The molecular understanding is still not solved so more research in this area is on the horizon.
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- Scientific Programme Director - Strategic Programmes
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- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Management Team
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- Director of Public Affairs & Signature Projects
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- Scientific Programme Director - Neurotorium
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- Scientific Programme Director - the Brain Prize
Martyn Goulding obtained his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Today he is Professor and Departmental Head, Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA. Adjunct Professor, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), La Jolla, CA, USA.
Martyn Goulding's lab has a longstanding interest in understanding how the spinal cord is organized at a circuit level to control movement. This interest was born out of studies defining the developmental programs that specify interneuron cell types in the spinal cord. His lab has been at the forefront of efforts to identify and functionally characterize the interneuron cell types that comprise the core elements of the s locomotor central pattern generator network in the spinal cord.
One of the fundamental issues he is interested in is how the somatosensory system interfaces with the spinal motor network to control movement - this is key to understanding how the motor system is functionally organized and operates.
Currently, his team are addressing this issue in a comprehensive manner to determine how sensory information is used by the spinal cord to regulate a range of reflexive and volitional motor behaviors. He also has a strong interest in elucidating how pain and light touch modalities are encoded by our spinal cord and brain, so that we can understand at a cellular level the central pathways that carry this information, and how these pathways are altered to give rise to chronic pain and itch.
Professor Moskowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Tufts University School of Medicine. His laboratory has been in the departments of Radiology, Neurosurgery and Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital where he spent most of his career following 8 years as a postdoctoral fellow and faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Michael A. Moskowitz is professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
Michael Moskowitz became intrigued by migraine after 6 years of clinical training in internal medicine and neurology at Yale and Harvard Hospitals. He was the first to hypothesize that vasoactive neuropeptides contained within trigeminal meningeal nerve fibers participate in migraine pathophysiology and to suggest new strategies for prophylaxis and treatment. After discovering the sensory nerves to the circle of Willis within the meninges, penning the name trigeminovascular system and identifying the first neuropeptide in this pathway, he proposed a migraine road map that implicated trigeminal neuropeptides and their receptors as therapeutic targets.
His laboratory showed that classical antimigraine drugs (ergots, triptans) inhibited neuropeptide release, thereby inspiring use of drugs and biologicals that block release and inhibit a meningeal inflammatory response. Building on this scheme, his laboratory looked for upstream endogenous triggers and identified spreading depression (underlying migraine aura) as the first candidate that activated the trigeminovascular system and as a target of preventative antimigraine drugs. Identifying other upstream triggers, whether from brain or blood vessels, will greatly facilitate our understanding of migraine going forward.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neurobiology / Harvard Medical School
Michael Greenberg received a BA in Chemistry from Wesleyan University in 1976, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Rockefeller University, New York, in 1982. In 1986 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and he was made full Professor in 1994. Since 2008 he has been the Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, USA.
That our sensory experiences shape the structure and function of the brain is one of the profound discoveries in the field of neuroscience in the 20th century. Michael Greenberg's seminal discoveries of activity- dependent gene transcription have revealed how nature and nurture cooperate to shape mammalian brain development and plasticity. Building on his early observation that neurotransmitter reception triggers the rapid induction of new gene expression, his work has focused on elucidating the nature and role of neuronal transcriptional programs induced in response to extracellular stimuli.
Work in the Greenberg laboratory has characterized the signal transduction pathways linking calcium influx at distal synapses to the neuronal nucleus, uncovered an extensive network of neuronal activity-responsive cis-regulatory elements that coordinate these gene expression changes, and demonstrated significant neuronal cell-type- and species-specific diversity in these transcriptional responses.
Michel Goedert, a Luxembourg national, received an M.D. from the University of Basel (Switzerland) and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). He has worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge as a Programme Leader since 1984 and was Head of its Neurobiology Division between 2003 and 2016. Since 2014, he has also been an Honorary Professor at Cambridge University.
Goedert's work combines biochemical, molecular biological and structural techniques to investigate common neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. In 1988, Goedert and colleagues reported that the microtubule-associated protein Tau is an integral component of the paired helical and straight filaments of Alzheimer's disease. This led Goedert to clone, sequence and express in bacteria the six Tau isoforms that are produced in adult human brain and the big Tau isoform characteristic of the peripheral nervous system. In 1992, he reported that filaments from the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease contain all six Tau isoforms, each in a hyperphosphorylated state. In 1996, Goedert and colleagues showed that the addition of heparin leads to the assembly of non-phosphorylated recombinant Tau into filaments.
In 1998, Goedert and colleagues reported a mutation in MAPT, the Tau gene, that causes familial multiple system Tauopathy (the first use of that term) with presenile dementia, a familial form of frontotemporal dementia. Mutations in MAPT were also reported by others at the same time. Since then, Goedert and others identified additional pathogenic MAPT mutations (the current total stands at fifty-nine), which always lead to the formation of abundant filamentous Tau inclusions. Strikingly, these inclusions often resemble those of sporadic Tauopathies. The identification of MAPT mutations proved that dysfunction of Tau protein is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration and dementia. This work also resulted in the production, by Goedert and others, of mouse lines transgenic for human mutant Tau, that exhibit Tau hyperphosphorylation, filament formation and neurodegeneration. Using such lines, Goedert and colleagues showed that activation of autophagy can reduce seeded Tau aggregation and neurodegeneration.
In 2009, Goedert and colleagues demonstrated the prion-like behaviour of insoluble Tau in transgenic mouse brain. They subsequently showed that short Tau filaments constitute the major species of seed-competent protein in the brains of mice transgenic for human mutant Tau. In work using cultured cells, Goedert and colleagues showed that Tau aggregation is necessary for seeding and that conformation determines the potencies of native and recombinant Tau aggregates. In 2013, he and his colleagues reported that distinct human Tauopathies are probably caused by different molecular conformers of assembled Tau. The definition of a molecular conformer of assembled Tau must include its structural characterisation. In 2017, Goedert and colleagues reported the high-resolution structures of Tau filaments from Alzheimer's disease, as determined by cryo-electron microscopy. This showed that high-resolution structures of amyloid filaments can be obtained using material purified from human brain. On-going work is aimed at determining the structures of Tau filaments from other Tauopathies, including Pick's disease and progressive supranuclear palsy
Job Titles:
- Scientific Programme Manager, Frontier Grants
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- Senior Investment Director
Ole Kiehn graduated in medicine and Doctor of Medical Science from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a currently Professor in Integrative Neuroscience at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Copenhagen and Professor in Neurophysiology at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
Ole Kiehn studies the organization of neuronal circuits that execute movements. His lab has employed and developed electrophysiological approaches in combination with genetic and optical technologies to enable cellular and circuit-level analysis of spinal motor circuits.
His work has identified key elements of spinal circuitries necessary for producing changes in timing and coordination of locomotion. Work from his lab has also delineated the diversification of brainstem circuits involved in the episodic expression or context-dependent selection of locomotor behaviour. The work links neuronal circuit organization to behaviour and demonstrates translational potential in the development of therapies for movement disorders caused by trauma or disease.
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- Senior Scientific Director, Frontier Grants
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- Senior Investment Associate
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- Director / Max Planck Institute
Peter Dayan studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and did a PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on statistical and neural network models of learning. After postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute and the University of Toronto, he was an assistant professor at MIT. He moved to London in 1998 to help found the Gatsby Unit of Computational Neuroscience at University College London. Today is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany.
Peter Dayan builds mathematical and computational models of neural processing, with a particular emphasis on representation and learning. The main focus is on reinforcement learning and unsupervised learning, covering the ways that animals come to choose appropriate actions in the face of rewards and punishments, and the ways and goals of the process by which they come to form neural representations of the world. The models are informed and constrained by neurobiological, psychological, and ethological data. A more recent interest is failure modes of decision making and the nascent field of computational psychiatry. He has long worked on the main neuromodulatory systems in the brain: acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. He has modelled their involvement in appetitive and aversive reinforcement, vigour, uncertainty, and interruption. He collaborates with a wide range of theoretical and experimental groups.
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- Senior Vice President, Financial Investments and Head of Invest
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- Scientific Programme Director - Talent Programmes
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- Senior Investment Director
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- Sustainability and Strategy Lead
Ray Dolan studied medicine at University College Galway, National University of Ireland. He completed a specialist training in psychiatry in UK (1979 - 1986). In 1994 he joined the Institute of Neurology, University College London, as part of a group who established the Wellcome Trust Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL). Since 1999 he has held the Mary Kinross Chair in Neuropsychiatry, at UCL. In 2006, he became founding Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, at UCL. Since 2014 he has been Director of a UCL- Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. He holds an honorary Professorship at the Humboldt University, Berlin and is an External Member of the Max Planck Society. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.
Ray Dolan's research is concerned with how we learn about reward and punishment, and how reward and punishment impact on our subjective emotional state and on decision making. Using insights from this work he addresses how processing of reward and punishment breaks down in the context of psychiatric disorder. He uses a range of research approaches including functional neuroimaging, computational analysis of behaviour and psychopharmacological manipulations.
Richard Morris received his BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and his D.Phil from Sussex University. Currently, he is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Associate of the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante. He is a Fellow, of the Royal Society, London and in 2007 was made Commander of the British Empire.
Richard Morris has a longstanding interest is the neurobiology of learning and memory. His work focuses on the role of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity in memory formation and consolidation. It has involved the development of novel behavioural tasks (including the watermaze and the event arena) and joint theoretical ideas such as the concept of synaptic tagging and capture. Current projects include optogenetic investigation of neuromodulation of cellular memory consolidation, and the role of prior knowledge, particularly ‘schemas', in systems memory consolidation. One group in his lab is investigating the relevance of these ideas with respect to memory enhancement and the development of novel therapeutics for Alzheimer's Disease.
Job Titles:
- Professor & Senior Investigator / University of Basel & FMI
Silvia Arber obtained her PhD in Neurobiology from University of Basel, at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel, Switzerland. Today she is Professor of Neurobiology at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and a Senior Investigator at the FMI in Basel, Switzerland.
Stanislas Dehaene studied mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, obtained his master's degree in Applied mathematics and computer science from the University of Paris VI and completed his PhD in Experimental Psychology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Paris. Today he is Professor of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France, Paris, and Director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, NeuroSpin, Saclay, France. He is a Member of US Academy of Sciences, British Academy, French Academy of Sciences, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and Academia Europae.
The Dehaene lab studies how the human brain acquires and implements the symbolic processes that underlie language and mathematics. His laboratory clarified the role of two brain regions: the intraparietal sulcus for number sense and the left occipito-temporal cortex for word reading. They investigate how these regions change as a function of education, and how they interconnect to language areas, particularly during the processing of nested expressions, a function that may be unique to humans. Their research also attempts to clarify the mechanisms of consciousness by studying whether these cognitive processes can unfold with subliminal stimuli, and which brain events characterize conscious processing.
Job Titles:
- Senior Investment Director
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President, Finance & HR
Job Titles:
- Head of Department / Pázmány Péter Catholic University
Tamás Freund received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and his D.Sc. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Tamás Freund is director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Head of the Department of Neurosciences, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, in Budapest.
He has been involved for over 30 years in functional anatomical studies on cortical microcircuits, employing combinations of immunocytochemistry, electron microscopy, in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology. His conceptually novel research uncovered: 1) new molecular pathways in the communication of neurons, 2) the identity and principles of connectivity of neurons that build up cortical circuitry, and 3) the generation of network activity patterns that underlie various stages of information processing and storage in the brain.
He made significant discoveries regarding the structure and function of cortical microcircuits, with particular attention to their inhibitory components, and relationship to oscillations that underlie different stages of memory formation. He discovered that pacemaker neurons in the septal region are GABAergic, inhibitory, and selectively innervate GABAergic interneurons in the hippocampus, thereby synchronizing activity rhythmically at theta frequency. His results in the epilepsy field provided direct evidence for an early loss of inhibitory interneurons. His group discovered that CB1 cannabinoid receptors inhibit neurotransmitter release and described the structure and operational principles of this circuit breaker in several brain regions. Even though his work is mostly considered basic research in the field of biomedical sciences, his results have considerable relevance to pharmaceutical and clinical research.
Job Titles:
- Professor and Director / University of Cambridge
Trevor W. Robbins obtained his Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Jesus College at the University of Cambridge. Following this, he received his PhD degree from the University of Cambridge in 1975. Today he is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of Research, Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK. He was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012, for services to medical research and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
His work focuses on functions of the frontal lobes of the brain and their regulation by the chemical monoamine neurotransmitter systems in humans and other animals. This work is relevant to neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, depression, drug addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. His lab devises and employs psychological paradigms for investigating cognitive functions including planning, decision-making, learning, attention and self-control, often with brain imaging. He is especially interested in mechanisms underlying possible cognitive enhancing effects of drugs and in understanding the causation and neural basis of drug addiction and impulsive-compulsive behaviour.
Job Titles:
- Director / Max Planck Institute
Winfried Denk studied physics at the Ludwig- Maximilians University in Munich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Cornell University (PhD 1989). He worked at the IBM research lab in Zurich and at Bell Laboratories before becoming a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. He is in now Director of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, Germany. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Physics, University of Heidelberg and a Senior Fellow, HHMI Janelia Research Campus.
Winfried Denk's main interests lie in the development of microscopy techniques. Currently his lab is working on methods to reconstruct the synaptic circuit diagram of an entire mouse brain using serial block face electron-microscopy. In the past he has worked on near-field optical super-resolution microscopy, protein-structure determination using multi-dimensional NMR, mechano-electrical transduction in hair cells, multi-photon microscopy, calcium signaling in synaptic spines and in dendrites and on motion-processing in the retina.