LIBD - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Database Analyst for the Lieber Institute
Aaron Goldman is a Database Analyst for the Lieber Institute. His research focuses on gene effects related to schizophrenia and aging, using a variety of structural and functional neuroimaging techniques, particularly surface-based analysis. Mr. Goldman earned his Bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining the Lieber institute, he performed research at the National Institute of Mental Health, as a member of the Genes, Cognition and Psychosis Program.
Job Titles:
- Fellow in the Lab of Lieber Institute
- Postdoctoral Fellow
Alejandra Romero Morales, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Lieber Institute Lead Investigator Brady Maher. She is originally from Costa Rica and earned her PhD in cell and developmental biology from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Head
- Section Head
- Section Head, Clinical Diagnostics
Amy Deep-Soboslay is Section Head, Clinical Diagnostics for the Postmortem Brain Tissue Collection at the Lieber Institute. Amy manages all demographic and clinical data for the collection. She conducts retrospective clinical reviews for every brain donor, which include family informant interviews with the next-of-kin, psychiatric records, toxicological analysis, neuropathological exams, medical examiner data, and summarizes all of these data into psychiatric narrative summaries, in order to determine lifetime psychiatric diagnoses for every case. Amy earned her B.A. in psychology from Loyola University in Baltimore, MD, and her master's degree in counseling from the University of Pittsburgh. Amy joined the Lieber Institute in 2013 after serving as the Study Coordinator of the NIMH Brain Tissue Collection from 2001-2013, where she gained specialized expertise in postmortem clinical diagnosis under the supervision of Dr. Joel Kleinman, and received the NIMH Director's Award.
Job Titles:
- Chief Financial Officer
- Institute in 2014 As the Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Maslan joined the Institute in 2014 as the Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Maslan leads all aspects of LIBD's financial management and plays a pivotal role in the organization's business development efforts. With more than 20 years comprehensive financial and general business experience, including investor relations, capital raising, strategic planning and budgeting, licensing, mergers & acquisitions, financial reporting, and corporate governance, Mr. Maslan provides strategic guidance to the LIBD leadership, and manages all aspects of the organization's operational financial plans.
Before joining the Lieber Institute, Mr. Maslan served 8 years as CFO for Cytomedix, Inc., a publicly traded medical device/biotechnology company, where he was responsible for the full spectrum of financial and administrative functions, and integrally involved in all capital raising, M&A, licensing, and strategic planning activities. Prior to Cytomedix, Mr. Maslan served as Controller of BioReliance, and previously held various positions of increasing responsibility at GlobeTraders, Inc., Providence Laboratory Associates, and KPMG. Mr. Maslan received his undergraduate degree in Accountancy from Miami University of Ohio and is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Maryland.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate
- Research Associate in the Developmental Neurobiology and Functional Genomics Division at the Lieber Institute
Anna Brandtjen is a Research Associate in the Developmental Neurobiology and Functional Genomics Division at the Lieber Institute, focusing on culturing living fibroblasts from Post Mortem brain tissue. She is also preparing to start RNA extractions. Anna graduated with a B.A. in Biology and concentration in Neural and Behavioral Sciences from Bryn Mawr College in 2013, and received departmental honors. During her undergraduate career, she did research on the Calcium binding protein, Synaptotagmin-1, in embryonic chick forebrain tissue.
Anthony Ramnauth (he/him) is a Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate in the lab of Dr. Keri Martinowich. His research interests are using high-throughput multiplexed small molecular fluorescent in situ hybridization (smFISH) to understand cell type heterogeneity in neurodevelopment and the adult brain across species, and using these data in parallel with other experimental data such as histology and single-cell ‘omics' to evaluate the biological contexts of psychiatric disease risk. Anthony earned a B.S. at City University of New York (CUNY) John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Legal Studies, two B.A. degrees at CUNY Queens College in Philosophy and Biology, and a M.A. at State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo in Philosophy. He was previously employed as a research technologist in the joint lab of Dr. Alfredo Kirkwood and Dr. Hey-Kyoung Lee, before matriculating into the Neuroscience Program at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2017.
Job Titles:
- Computer Scientist
- Research Scientist
Apuã Paquola Ph.D. is a computer scientist and computational biologist, with main interest in genomics and machine learning. During his postdoc at the Salk Institute, in the Gage Lab, he developed computational approaches to identify somatic retrotransposition events in single cells, which led to the discovery of extensive somatic mosaicism in the healthy human brain. At the Lieber Institute, his goal is to develop and apply machine learning approaches on multiple types of biomedical data to gain insight on brain development and brain disorders. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science at the State University of Campinas, and Ph.D. in Bioinformatics at the University of Sāo Paulo, Brazil, where he worked on gene regulation and horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotes.
August (AJ) Deacon joined the Lieber Institute in 2018 and works as the Staff Accountant in the Finance division under David Sedghi. He graduated with a B.S in Accounting from Rutgers University in New Brunswick: New Jersey. Previously he worked as a Senior Accountant for Laureate Education where he oversaw the European Segment as part of the Corporate Controllership team, reviewing the monthly closes and financial statements to ensure compliance with US GAAP.
Job Titles:
- Human Resources Coordinator
Ayanna Allyne joined the Lieber Institute in 2021 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she provided support to several administrative, research and clinical groups. Ayanna earned her Bachelor's degree in Human Services from Stevenson University and will soon complete her Master's degree in Human Resources Management from the University of Maryland.
Bareera Qamar joined the Lieber Institute in June 2019 as a research assistant in Dr. Jennifer Erwin's lab. She currently works under Dr. Laura D'Ignazio and characterizes iPSC lines to identify therapeutic targets for X-linked Dystonia Parkinsonism (XDP). Bareer earned her B.S. degree in biological sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park. As an undergraduate, Bareera studied polyphosphazene carriers as an intracellular delivery system for protein therapeutics. For this, she received high honors for her departmental thesis and had three papers published as first and second authors. She hopes to further her education and will apply to medical schools in the near future.
Job Titles:
- Manager of Network Operations for the Lieber Institute
Bill Ulrich is the Manager of Network Operations for the Lieber Institute. He is responsible for maintaining and developing the Institute's computing infrastructure. Prior to joining the LIBD, he worked for more than 15 years as a programmer and system administrator for organizations including The University of Texas at Dallas, Haverford College, and CNN. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Delaware, and an M.S. in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience from The University of Texas at
Brady J. Maher, Ph.D. is a Lead Investigator in the Developmental Neurobiology and Functional Genomics division of the Lieber Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. Maher's research is focused on understanding fundamental mechanisms involved in brain development and brain function with an emphasis on how dysfunction in these mechanisms can result in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. By focusing on key developmental genes that are associated with psychiatric risk, his research group is both enhancing our primary understanding of brain development while also making significant inroads into identifying pathophysiological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders.
A major focus of his lab is to understand the function of Transcription Factor 4 (TCF4) gene. TCF4 is a clinically pleiotropic gene having association with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autosomal dominant mutations in TCF4 result in Pitt Hopkins syndrome, a rare neurodevelopmental disorder with a variety of symptoms including developmental delays, intellectual disability, absent speech, and breathing abnormalities. His group has shown that TCF4 is an activity-dependent transcription factor that is a critical regulator of cortical development. They have shown TCF4 regulates several developmental steps including cell fate specification, neuronal migration, cortical column formation, and neuronal excitability.
Recently, Dr. Maher's group demonstrated that TCF4 directly regulates oligodendrocyte development and myelination. This work has led to the hypothesis that defects in myelination are a common pathophysiology across the autism spectrum. His research group is now working on genetic and pharmacological approaches to rescue myelination in PTHS models, with the ultimate goal of applying these therapeutic approaches more broadly to ASD.
Bruno Torres joined Lieber in December 2020 as a Stem Cell Core Director and Staff Scientist working in Dr. Erwin's group. He is interested in modeling human disease using iPSC to understand neurodevelopment disorders. His prior work at the laboratory at Brazilian Bioscience National Laboratory in the National Center for Research in Energy and Materials - CNPEM - Brazil, focused on the use of iPCS to understand how missense mutations impact the brain development of intellectual disabilities patients. His post-doctoral work began at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in the laboratory of Dr. Allyson Muotri where he worked with iPSC derived neurons to model autism spectrum disorders. He received his MSc. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Federal University of São Paulo - UNIFESP, Brazil, where he worked in Dr. Esper Cavalheiro laboratory studying the mechanisms of epileptogenic process using pilocarpine experimental models.
Chao Li, Ph.D. is a Staff Scientist in the Molecular Neuropathology Group at the Institute. Her research interest focuses primarily on Williams Syndrome gene regulation, expression and alternative splicing in the human postmortem brain. Dr. Li received her B.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in College of Life Science & Biotechnology of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China in 2007. Prior to joining the Lieber Institute, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Genes Cognition and Psychosis Program (GCAP) of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- CEO and Co - Founder, Myeloid Therapeutics
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Board of Directors
Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., is the Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) and a Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Neuroscience and Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is regarded worldwide as one of the preeminent scientists in psychiatry research, having been at the forefront of scientific investigation of schizophrenia and related disorders for a generation. He attended college at the Johns Hopkins University, medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and did residencies in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and in neurology at George Washington University. He is board-certified in both psychiatry and neurology.
Dr. Weinberger was instrumental in focusing the research landscape on the role of abnormal brain development as a risk factor for many psychiatric disorders. His lab identified the first specific genetic mechanism of risk for psychiatric illness, and the first genetic effects that account for variation in specific human cognitive functions and in human temperament. In addition, he and his colleagues developed the first high-fidelity animal model of schizophrenia. In 2003, Science magazine highlighted the genetic research of his lab as the second biggest scientific breakthrough of the year, second to the discovery of the origins of the cosmos.
Dr. Weinberger is the recipient of many honors and awards and he is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been president of major professional organizations. He has published over 700 papers in high-profile, peer-reviewed journals and has authored or edited 11 books. He has also written extensively on the impact of mental illness in our society, health disparities in brain research and the role of the developing brain during adolescence.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Research Consultant
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- Executive
Elaine Jones is a C-level executive who has incorporated her for-profit sector experience, ranging from sales, marketing and, as Senior Vice President/General Manager, leading a key operating region of a Fortune 500 service company into the not-for-profit sector. As Chief Operating Officer, she has been involved in the start-up phase of significant research institutes: The Picower Institute for Molecular Medicine, New York, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle. Elaine is Chief Operating Officer at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, the Maltz Research Laboratories, Baltimore.
Elizabeth Pattie is a Research Associate in the Imaging Development Group and joined the Lieber Institute in the summer of 2018. Her research applies molecular biology and cellular imaging techniques to characterize iPSC-derived neurons from schizophrenic and control patients. She graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Biotechnology and Molecular Bioscience. As an undergraduate, she was honored as a Research Scholar for her research on targeted molecular imaging agents and their binding affinity and uptake in 2D and 3D cellular models as potential diagnostic tools for prostate and breast cancers.
Eugenia Radulescu, M.D., Ph.D. joined the Lieber Institute in 2013, as a Research Scholar in the Clinical Sciences division. She earned her M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy "C. Davila" Bucharest, Romania and practiced as a psychiatrist for thirteen years before switching to a career in psychiatric research. In 2003-2009 she was a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Weinberger's lab, Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, NIMH/ NIH. There Eugenia acquired expertise in neuroimaging methods- structural and functional MRI. Together with the colleagues from the Neuroimaging Core, she used these methods to investigate the effects of schizophrenia risk genetic variants on well characterized neuroimaging intermediate phenotypes. In 2010-2014 Eugenia was a visiting fellow at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and Sackler Center for Consciousness Science in United Kingdom, where she continued to use MRI for studying brain structural and functional abnormalities associated with neurodevelopmental disorders (i.e. schizophrenia and autism). In the Division of Clinical Sciences at the Lieber Institute, she pursues her long standing interest in applying complex fMRI analytical methods to test genetic epistasis effects on brain networks relevant as novel drug targets in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Federica Farinelli, Ph.D joined the Lieber Institute as a staff scientist I in the February 2019.
Her research interest lies at the intersection of quantitative physiology and molecular biophysics employing multiple electrophysiological techniques to study ion channel signaling complexes that are critical to neurological and cardiovascular function. Dr. Farinelli earned her Ph.D. degree in neurobiology and electrophysiology from the University of Ferrara in Italy. Prior to joining the Lieber Institute, Federica worked as a senior postdoc/research associate in Dr. Tomaselli's lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During this time, the focus of her research primarily focused was on sodium channel isoforms, including structures, domain specific functions, and pharmacology mostly in relation to channelopathies providing that provide the biophysical bases for possible therapeutic targets.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Harris Professor in the Child Study Center / Professor in the Department of Neuroscience
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Managing Director and Senior Vice President, Investments, Simon & Associates Wealth Management
Gianluca Ursini, M.D., Ph.D., is an Investigator in Functional Genomics at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His primary interest is the dynamic interaction between genes and epigenetic factors during brain development and activity. His lab is currently investigating the role of early life (i.e., pre and peri-natal) environment in the pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental disorders. In this regard, Luca has discovered how genomic risk for schizophrenia and severe early life complications impact the risk for the disease through processes involving placental function. Luca attended the University of Bari "A. Moro," where he received an M.D. in 2002, a residency in Psychiatry in 2006 and a Ph.D. in "Experimental Neurobiology" in 2011. He was drawn into scientific research during his residency training in Psychiatry. Reviewing the medical history of his patients, he was intrigued by the possibility of studying how their diseases developed, which he assumed followed very diverse trajectories. Over the course of his residency and his Ph.D., Luca has been performing studies on schizophrenia using a combination of imaging and genetics techniques, triggering the investigation of the relationship between epigenetic factors, genetic variants and brain phenotypes in humans. He also received training in Constructivist Psychology and Psychotherapy. Luca has joined the Lieber Institute in the spring of 2012 as a visiting scientist first and then as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Andrea Poretti award.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant
- Research Assistant in Dr. Brady Maher
Gina Shim is a Research Assistant in Dr. Brady Maher's lab. She first started at Lieber Institute for Brain Development as an intern in 2019, when she participated in research examining Pitt-Hopkins, a type of autism. She has been involved in the pipeline project for schizophrenia, assisting in the stem cell work and genome investigation of organoids developed at the Institute. Gina graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2021 with a bachelor's degree in neuroscience, focusing on the area of systems neuroscience.
Giovanna Punzi, M.D., Ph.D. joined the Lieber Institute in the summer of 2015 as a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Weinberger's group. Her main interest is the investigation of genetics and epigenetics of hetero- and auto-directed aggressive behaviors. Dr. Punzi attended the University of Bari ‘A. Moro', where she received a M.D. in 2006, a residency in Psychiatry in 2011 and a Ph.D. in ‘Forensic Pathology and Criminology' in 2015. Over the course of her residency and her Ph.D., she has been studying the relationship between aggressive behaviors, genetic variations and brain phenotypes, acquiring expertise both in forensic psychiatry and in neuroscience. At LIBD, she is investigating gene-expression post-mortem changes associated with suicide, with a special focus on discriminating violent means from non-violent means of suicide.
Glen Ernst, M.S. joined the Drug Discovery Division at the Lieber Institute in May 2011. His current work involves applying medicinal chemistry principles and organic chemistry synthetic skills to generate potential target compounds for drug discovery across various targets of interest. Prior to joining the Lieber Institute, Glen worked in Medicinal Chemistry for over 20 years at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, and was as a Principal Scientist and Project Chemistry Leader at the end of his tenure there. Glen's work was primarily focused on drug discovery opposite several Central Nervous System disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and migraine. His contributions led to the discovery of several new chemical entities which entered drug development. While at AstraZeneca, Glen was a co-recipient of the AstraZeneca Breakthrough Award for organic synthetic contributions to a schizophrenia project, and served on global committees within the AstraZeneca organization as his site's representative.
Job Titles:
- Medical Records Specialist
Hao Yang Tan, M.D. is a Lead Investigator at the Lieber Institute. His work is on neuroimaging experiments, brain connectivity analyses and genetics in the discovery of the mechanisms of neuropsychiatric diseases like schizophrenia. In recent work, he found that coding variation in the protein phosphatase AKT1 that affects protein expression in human B lymphoblasts, apoptosis and response to cancer therapeutics, also influenced several brain measures related to dopaminergic function of relevance to schizophrenia and mood disorders, though in an opposite direction to cancer. He has further examined predictions from basic models of dopaminergic and neurotrophic signaling in cortical and cortical-subcortical circuitry implicated in executive function and memory; he also examined pharmacogenetic effects on cognition in the context of anti-dopaminergic and mood stabilizer drug therapy. Specific aims of current research include the study of differing childhood risk environments (eg urban vs rural upbringing) on the genetic expression of brain circuit function relevant to emotional processing, information updating and computation altered in psychosis. Active collaborations include the NIMH Sibling Study, the Peking University Institute of Mental Health, and the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Singapore where he is a Visiting Associate Professor.
Dr Tan obtained his medical degree from the National University of Singapore, and psychiatry certification from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. He completed postdoctoral training in neuroimaging and genetics at the NIMH. He was recipient of the American Psychiatric Association - AstraZeneca Young Minds in Psychiatry Award, and the NIMH Seymour S Kety Memorial Fellowship Award. Currently, he is Principal Investigator of a National Institutes of Health funded study (R01) on how genes and the childhood environment affect risks and resilience in brain development of psychosis.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Investigator and Director of Drug Discovery
Job Titles:
- Senior Operations Manager
Jiyoung Kim, Ph.D., is a staff scientist in the U.R.S.INI lab. Her research interest is to identify the mechanisms through which genetic risk for schizophrenia converges with ELCs, prenatal and perinatal complications. Her research focuses mainly on the placenta. Modeling human trophoblast from patients and control groups, she is working to characterize whether patients affected with schizophrenia show phenotypic differences in differentiated trophoblast, syncytiotrophoblast, and extravillous trophoblast compared to unaffected controls. With this in vitro system, she also aims at investigating the effect of placental genomic predictors and placental genes associated with risk on placenta development and functions and the possible impact on human brain development of regulating secreted factors. Jiyoung earned her BS, MS, and Ph.D. from Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea, where she studied germline development in C. elegans animal genetic model system. Using germline defective mutants that generate no offspring, she identified the responsible gene for the sterility by forward and reverse genetics, and she found the mechanism underlying the role played by this gene in oocyte maturation. She was also a postdoctoral fellow in the National Institutes of Health, where she studied the post-transcriptional gene regulation by long noncoding RNAs in human cancer cells. Before joining the Lieber Institute, Jiyoung worked as a scientist in Elixirgen Therapeutics, participating in IND drug development for age-related diseases and an RNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.
Sreya Mukherjee, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow working in the U.R.S.INI lab since April 2021. She analyzes transcriptomic data from the placenta and brain to unravel tissue-specific etiopathogenetic mechanisms linked with genomic risk for schizophrenia, using various bioinformatics methods and tools. Sreya received an M.S. in Bioinformatics from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and a Ph.D. from the University of South Florida, Tampa, in Computational Medicinal Chemistry. During her Ph.D., she has been designing different structure-based drug targets for various diseases. Sreya hopes, with her work, to unlock research answers that can help people.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Clinical Sciences
Job Titles:
- Director of Information Technology for the Lieber Institute
- Director of IT Services and Database Manager
John Meyers is the Director of Information Technology for the Lieber Institute. As such, he manages the development of the information technology (IT) framework, as well as the technology procedures and practices of the Institute, including the development of policies for managing the underlying IT infrastructure. Mr. Meyers manages the Institute's data-sharing relationships with participating governmental and non-governmental organizations. Mr. Meyers attended the University of Maryland at College Park where he received a B.S. in Journalism with a minor in French Literature. He was a Senior Intranet Developer for User Technology Associates before joining the Bureau of Labor Statistics as an IT Specialist. From 2002-2011, he directed database development and management at the NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch (CBDB).
Job Titles:
- Investigator and Director of RNA Sequencing Core
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Director of Communications
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Leonardo Collado-Torres, Ph.D. is an Investigator with the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. Leonardo got his Bachelor in Genomic Sciences degree (Licenciado en Ciencias Genómicas) from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2009 where he first started learning and teaching R. He joined the Winter Genomics startup in 2009 as its first employee and developed a solid base for the growth of this company during his two years there. During his Ph.D. studies at the Department of Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg of School of Public Health with Jeff Leek and Andrew Jaffe, Dr. Collado-Torres developed several R packages that are part of the Bioconductor project. derfinder allows annotation-agnostic differential expression analysis of high-throughput RNA sequencing data (RNA-seq) and has been used with LIBD data to show that the annotation of the human brain transcriptome is incomplete. regionReport is used to create interactive reports from genomic analyses and recount provides access to over 70,000 RNA-seq human samples. These three packages have been downloaded more than 10,000 times as of September 2016. At LIBD, Dr. Collado-Torres is part of the Data Science team which goals include better understanding and characterizing genomics signatures in the human brain, including DNA methylation and gene expression. Leonardo helps mentor other team members, provides support for LIBD projects and is advancing his academic career as part of Andrew Jaffe's lab.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Picower Professor of Neuroscience / Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT
Job Titles:
- Director of Laboratories and Facilities
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Member of the Board of Directors
Mike Poslusney is a medicinal chemist who joined the Drug Discovery Division of the Lieber Institute in October 2013 as a Staff Scientist II. Mike applies his background in medicinal chemistry, and in particular neuroscience, to optimizing lead chemical series for the Division's multiple programs. Prior to joining the Lieber Institute, Mike worked at the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, where he focused on designing allosteric modulators of G-protein coupled receptors. His accomplishments there include the discovery of several compounds which directly advanced one project to the lead optimization stage, and led directly to a major industrial collaboration for another project. Previously, Mike worked at Merck, focusing on the COMT inhibitor and siRNA delivery projects. While at Merck, Mike independently designed a safe kilogram scale synthesis of a key intermediate, enabling studies of a leading siRNA delivery conjugate in primates.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Member of the Board of Directors
Norman Weisman joined the Lieber Institute in April, 2014 as the Senior Financial Analyst and Grants Manager and in July, 2014 moved into the role of financial Controller. Mr. Weisman reports to the CFO and is responsible for the Institute's accounting operations, budgeting, financial reporting, grants administration, and compliance. Mr. Weisman brings to the Lieber Institute 20+ years of controllership and senior financial management experience, primarily from within life sciences organizations. Prior to joining the Lieber Institute Mr. Weisman served as the financial Controller for Advanced Bioscience Laboratories, Inc., (ABL) a Maryland based and French owned contract research and manufacturing organization providing vaccine and therapeutic development programs to commercial and government clients . Mr. Weisman's earlier experience included working in financial and management positions for the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine (HJF), a non-government organization managing international pre-clinical and clinical medical research. Mr. Weisman earned his M.B.A. Degree from Georgetown University.
Pasquale Di Carlo, M.D., Ph.D. is an active collaborator of the U.R.S.INI lab. While completing his residency in Psychiatry and Ph.D. program at the University of Bari "Aldo Moro," he joined the Lieber Institute for Brain Development in the winter of 2018 as a Visiting Scientist. Throughout his training, he acquired broad expertise in psychiatry, imaging genetics and computational neuroscience, which he directed to the investigation of psychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia. Specifically, he set off the study of a co-expression network based on post-mortem microarray and RNA sequencing data to unravel the genetic and molecular underpinnings of schizophrenia etiology. He is primarily interested in developing predictive probabilistic models to translate post-mortem data into in vivo findings. As a Visiting Scientist at the Lieber Institute, he has built on these disciplines, mastering new skills in molecular biology and data science to complete his training as a young scientist. He is currently working as a psychiatrist in the Department of Mental Health of Sondrio (Milan, Italy). He is continuing to work on characterizing the molecular context of neurodevelopmental genes in terms of brain Spatio-temporal co-expression patterns and at the fetal-placental interface.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Provost Professor, Dept. Pediatrics, WM Keck Chair in Neurogenetics / Keck School of Medicine
Job Titles:
- Section Head, Molecular Biology
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Scientist
- Senior Research Scientist at the Lieber Institute
Richard E. Straub, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Scientist at the Lieber Institute. His research focuses on the identification and characterization of genes and neurobiological mechanisms influencing the clinical and intermediate ("biological") phenotypes that comprise schizophrenia. He has implemented high throughput systems for characterizing genetic variation, linkage disequilibrium (LD) mapping, and statistical analysis of epistatic interactions, incorporating expression data in an integrated bioinformatics framework. Dr. Straub received a B.S. in synthetic organic chemistry from New College and a Ph.D. from the Department of Cell Biology and Genetics at Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Straub served as Director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). In 2001, he joined the Genes Cognition and Psychosis Program (GCAP) of the intramural research program of the National Institute of Mental Health as a Senior Research Fellow. At GCAP, he carried out numerous candidate gene studies as well as genome wide association studies, discovering numerous additional schizophrenia susceptibility genes.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Partner, Cunningham Levy Muse LLP
Job Titles:
- Senior Director of Drug Discovery
Solomon Snyder, M.D. is the Distinguished Service Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Snyder received his undergraduate and medical training at Georgetown University and joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1980 he established the Department of Neuroscience and served as Director (1980-2006). He is the author of more than 1000 journal articles and several books. Dr. Snyder also served as founder and chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for two biotechnology companies, Nova Pharmaceuticals and, most recently, Guilford Pharmaceuticals, now part of Eisai. His research, honored with the 1978 Lasker Award and 2005 National Medal of Science, has led to many advances in the understanding of molecular neuroscience deriving from his identification of receptors for neurotransmitters and drugs, and from his elucidation of the action of psychotropic agents. Among other findings, he established gases as a new class of neurotransmitters and drugs, including nitric oxide and carbon monoxide and demonstrated the role of nitric oxide in mediating glutamate transmission. He has been a member of the Scientific Council of NARSAD (now the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation) since its inception in 1986 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the NARSAD Lieber Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Schizophrenia Research in 2001 and its Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2003.
Job Titles:
- Director of LIBD Imaging Core Facility
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science and Biostatistics / Director of the Center for Computational Biology
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences / Director, Center for Human Genetics
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics, Neurology and Psychiatry
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
- William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences / Director, Center for Human Genetics
Yanhong Wang, M.D. joined the Stem Cell Team at the Lieber Institute as a Research Associate in 2012. She generates induced pluripotent stem cells and differentiates into neurons from schizophrenic and control patients. Dr. Wang received her M.D. and M.S. degrees from Shanxi Medical University in China. Prior to joining the Lieber Institute, she worked in the Genes Cognition and Psychosis Program and the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch at NIMH where she received the Director's Award for significant contributions and dedication to the development of molecular and cell-based approaches for understanding the mechanisms of genetic risk for psychiatric disorders.