IND - Key Persons

Dr. Capacci earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto. His PhD work was completed at Princeton University in the lab of Dr. David MacMillan where he studied asymmetric organocatalysis and photoredox catalysis. In 2015, he joined Biogen where he worked on numerous drug discovery projects aimed at treating neurodegenerative diseases. He grew from individual contributor to program leader, supervising numerous chemists and leading project team members. He spearheaded efforts through hit validation, lead identification, and candidate selection activities. Dr. Capacci joined the IND in September 2023 as an Associate Adjunct Professor. He will leverage his synthetic and medicinal chemistry skills to assist in the discovery of small molecules that will solve unmet medical needs in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Angelique di Domenico

Job Titles:

Adjunct Professor
Assistant

Dr. di Domenico received her Master's in Neuroscience with a specialization in neurodegenerative diseases at King's College London and continued her studies in the field of neurodegeneration, specializing in Parkinson's disease, during her PhD years at the University of Barcelona and postdoc years at the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF). Her research has been focused primarily on glial cells, and more specifically, on the roles that astrocytes play during the progression of neurodegeneration. In her paper titled "Patient-Specific iPSC-Derived Astrocytes Contribute to Non-Cell-Autonomous Neurodegeneration in Parkinson's Disease," which was published in Stem Cell Reports (2019) and won the City of Barcelona Award in 2020 for its breakthroughs in the field, she demonstrated that astrocytes have a neurotoxic role in Parkinson's disease.

Anna Fiorenza

an..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Lab Research Specialist
Research Staff

Annemarie Charvat

an..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Specialist

Annie Ikemoto

an..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate III

Anthony Yung

an..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate II

Anton Nuñez Valera

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Drug Discovery Supervisor
Research Staff

Aparna Unnikrishnan

ap..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Postdoctoral Fellow

Aparna Unnikrishnan received her PhD in Biophysics from the Ohio State University in Summer 2020 under the guidance of Dr. Mark Foster. Dr. Unnikrishnan's graduate research involved the use of NMR spectroscopy and other biophysical techniques to study protein and nucleic acids structure and dynamics. She characterized an auto-inhibitory state in the Cre Recombinase enzyme and revealed a cis- to trans- conformational switch that regulates the assembly of the recombinogenic Cre-loxP complex. Dr. Unnikrishnan joined the Southworth lab as a postdoctoral scholar in November 2020. She will use cryo-EM to determine high-resolution structures of the regulatory protein complexes between molecular chaperone Hsp70, its cochaperones, and tau protein in the conformations associated with various neurodegenerative diseases. She aims to characterize the cellular mechanism of protein ubiquitination and clearance and help in the identification of novel therapeutic targets.

Arthur Melo

ar..@msg.ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Specialist

Arturo Chavez

ar..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate II

Athena Quddus

at..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Lab Assistant III
Research Staff

Austin Hughes

au..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Research Supervisor

Avi Samelson

av..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Postdoctoral Fellow

Avi Samelson received his PhD from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. There, he was a graduate student in the lab of Professor Susan Marqusee, studying how translation modulates protein energy landscapes. Here at UCSF, Dr. Samelson is interested in understanding how cells regulate protein folding especially in the context of neurodegenerative disease. He is also interested in studying the molecular basis for selective vulnerability in the context of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and ALS. Both FTD and ALS are neurodegenerative diseases, but they are caused by different proteins and different areas of the brain are first affected by disease. Dr. Samelson is using both a deep mutation scanning approach as well as a CRISPRi/a based genome-wide screen to understand the molecular basis for selective vulnerability.

Bai Qiang

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Assistant Animal Technician
Research Staff

Ben Tang

be..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Adjunct Professor
Associate

Dr. Tang received his PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University, where he developed biodegradable drug-loaded nanoparticles that penetrate the mucus barrier to deliver therapeutics to underlying tissues in the laboratory of Dr. Justin Hanes. After his graduate work, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the laboratories of Dr. Robert Langer and Dr. Daniel Anderson, where he developed glucose-responsive materials and systems for diabetes management, from improved delivery of insulin to novel materials that are able to continuously monitor glucose. Prior to joining the IND, Dr. Tang supported early discovery and developed assays to understand the disposition of novel therapeutic modalities in the Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism Group at Amgen. Throughout his career, Dr. Tang has studied and developed novel approaches to modulate and improve pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of various therapeutics, from small molecules to biologics. To support these efforts, he also established new disease models that better represent human disease physiology to evaluate innovative drug-delivery strategies. Dr. Tang joined the IND in 2017, where he is leading a pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism group to aid in the selection and evaluation of molecules designed to cure neurodegenerative disease.

Benjamin Orr

Job Titles:

Graduate Student, Keiser Lab / Kortemme Lab

Biswa Ramani

Job Titles:

Postdoctoral Fellow

Brandon Desousa

br..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Graduate Student, Kampmann Lab / Jain Lab

Bryan Ryder

br..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Postdoctoral Fellow

Carina Gonzalez

ca..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff

Carlos Alvarado

ca..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Animal Technician Assistant
Research Staff

Carlos Ozan

ca..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Facility Operations Lead
Research Staff

Chaitali Anand

ch..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Postdoctoral Fellow

Cherry Concengco

ch..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate III

Cheyenne Antonio

ch..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate II

Cheyenne Dean

ch..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate IIII

Christoffer Caro

ch..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff

Cuong Ly

cu..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff

Dakota Shankland

da..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Staff Research Associate III

Daniel Mordes

da..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Assistant Professor / Department of Pathology

Dr. Mordes joined the IND in 2021 as a Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor in Pathology. He is a neuropathologist most recently from the Dept. of Pathology at Mass. General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on understanding how neurons are lost in neurodegenerative diseases by combining human neuropathology with mechanistic experiments in stem cell-derived neurons. More recently, he has incorporated single-cell RNA-seq as a powerful complement to these methods. With collaborators, he demonstrated that heat shock proteins are elevated in the brains of ALS/frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients that harbor dipeptide repeat proteins. This observation suggests an attempt by these cells to protect against neurodegeneration, potentially revealing new drug targets for boosting neuronal viability. He has published in PNAS, Neuron, and the New England Journal of Medicine, and has received research awards from the ALS Association and NINDS. His lab is affiliated with the UCSF Weill Institute for Neuroscience and the Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. Dr. Mordes obtained his MD and PhD in Biochemistry from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He completed residency and fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, including serving as the clinical neuropathology fellow for the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC), and post-doctoral scientific training in the laboratory of Kevin Eggan at Harvard University and the Broad Institute. In addition to his research with the IND, Dan is also an attending pathologist with clinical duties on the neuropathology service at UCSF Medical Center.

Daniel Newport

da..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Lab Coordinator
Research Staff

Daniel Southworth

da..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Principal Investigator
Professor

Daniel Southworth earned his BS from UC Santa Cruz and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, in Baltimore, MD. There, he worked under the guidance of Rachel Green, studying fundamental mechanisms of protein translation catalyzed by the ribosome. He completed his postdoctoral work at UCSF in the David Agard Lab, where he gained expertise in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and determined structures and nucleotide-specific states of the Hsp90 molecular chaperone that underlie its dynamic conformational cycle. In 2011, Dr. Southworth accepted a faculty position at the University of Michigan in the Life Sciences Institute and Department of Biological Chemistry. There, his lab focused on understanding molecular chaperone-driven protein quality control mechanisms that are critical to protein folding and cellular stress responses. Dr. Southworth joined the IND at UCSF in 2017 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. His lab continues to study protein quality control and neurodegenerative disease pathways, using biochemistry and cryo-EM methods to determine the structure and mechanism of chaperones and other molecular machines that are critical to proteome function and maintenance.

Danielle Fernandez

Job Titles:

Research Staff Member
Research Staff
Senior Veterinary Nurse

Darren Hutt

da..@ucsf.edu

Job Titles:

Adjunct Professor
Assistant

Dr. Hutt earned his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Ottawa. He also completed his PhD in neuroscience at the University of Ottawa under the mentorship of Dr. Johnny Ngsee and Dr. Jay Baltz, studying the role of Rab GTPases and SNARE proteins in regulating vesicle trafficking and fusion. Dr. Hutt then joined the laboratory of Dr. William Balch at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Here he studied the trafficking and function of cystic fibrosis (CF)-causing variants of the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, a cAMP-regulated chloride channel, which is critical for proper ionic homeostasis and hydration of the extracellular environment of nearly all tissues. These studies identified a number of novel pathways that can be targeted to correct the trafficking and functional defects associated with the most common and severe CFTR variant. Dr. Hutt then joined Scripps Research as a Staff Scientist, where he examined the impact of protein misfolding on the proteostatic environment of cells and how modulation of this proteostatic environment can mitigate variant-specific protein misfolding of numerous disease-causing protein variants. Dr. Hutt joined the IND in 2019. His work focuses on the discovery of therapeutic interventions to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Carlo Condello

Job Titles:

Associate Professor
Principal Investigator

Dr. Carlo Condello is an Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Neurology and the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IND). He received his bachelor's degree in biology from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, TX, and his PhD from Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) where he used novel optical imaging approaches and animal models to study the kinetics and toxicity of β-amyloid deposition and the role of microglia in Alzheimer's disease (AD) with Dr. Jaime Grutzendler. Following graduation, the lab moved to Yale University, where Dr. Condello completed a project related to his thesis as a postdoctoral fellow. As a postdoc with Dr. Stanley Prusiner at UCSF, he developed several novel optical imaging tools, including noninvasive in vivo methods employing a bioluminescent genetic reporter of astrocytosis or near-infrared amyloid-binding dyes to monitor disease progression and therapeutic intervention in mouse models of AD, tauopathy, and prion disease. In collaboration with protein chemists, he developed a new technique using confocal spectral imaging and environment-sensitive probes to decipher and catalog conformational variants ("strains") of Aβ and tau deposits in the brains of AD patients and transgenic rodent models, which may have implications for developing more informative molecular diagnostics and strain-specific therapeutics. Dr. Condello continued these studies as a Group Leader (adjunct faculty) in the IND, where he led a team of scientists in developing new rodent models and human cell assays to study prion biology, neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation in vivo. Notably, he also directed collaborations with drug discovery scientists at the IND to discover new approaches to slowing prion propagation and neuropathology. Now in his own independent lab, Dr. Condello's research program aims to elucidate molecular pathways in microglia that govern protein aggregation and neurodegeneration using in vivo rodent models and human cultured cells. His lab is also keen to understand how genetic risk factors expressed by microglia augment conformational heterogeneity of amyloids and associated pathobiological mechanisms that lead to formation or clearance of specific strains. To address these important topics, the Condello lab is implementing a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach that spans advanced optical imaging, cell and molecular neuroscience, biophysics, and chemical biology methods.