The principal goal of the summer program is to provide students with a core experience in basic neuroscience with a strong influence of translation to solving important clinical needs. Faculty includes research scientists, physician-scientists, and physicians. Below is an overview of the faculty mentors available to guide students in program labs:
Alberto Aliseda, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Fundamental problems in fluid mechanics that arise in turbulent and complex, unsteady flows
Samuel Browd, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Hydrocephalus and development of new shunt designs for controlling intracranial pressure
Marie Y. Davis, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Movement disorders due to genetic causes, such as hereditary ataxias, dystonias, and parkinsonism; Huntington's Disease; Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias.
Christine Mac Donald, PhD (Program Co-Director)
Area of Research/Practice: Advanced MRI methods applied to traumatic brain injury (TBI) research
Richard G. Ellenbogen, MD, FACS (Program Director)
Area of Research/Practice: Molecular Imaging/Targeted treatments of brain tumors, TBI
Manuel F. Ferreira, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Genetic determinants of aneurysm formation and meningioma
Patrick Fillingham PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Computational fluid dynamics research for all aspects of neurosurgery with a particular focus on cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease
Jeff Herron, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Translational restorative neurosurgery including BCI technology and “closed loop” deep brain stimulator systems
Christoph Hofstetter, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Development of novel minimally invasive motion preserving spinal procedures.
Eric Holland, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Development of genetically accurate mouse models of gliomas. The biology of these tumors, the way that they respond to current therapy, and the development of new methods for treating them.
Suman Jayadev, MD
Area of Research/Practice: Neurogenetics and neurodegenerative disease. Neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration.
Franck Kalume, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Dravet Syndrome, Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy
C. Dirk Keene, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative disease
Zin Khaing, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Biomaterials, Neuroimmunology and Stem Cells for Repair Strategies in the Central Nervous System
Louis Kim, MD
Area of Research/Practice: Patient outcome measures and refinements in surgical and endovascular techniques in aneurysm, AVM, skull-based tumor, and cavernous malformation surgery.
Andrew Ko, MD
Area of Research/Practice: Deep brain stimulation, functional neurosurgery, epilepsy and pain
Ed Lein, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Using high-resolution anatomical transcriptome data to understand the molecular and cellular architecture of the mammalian neocortex and hippocampus
Michael Levitt, MD
Area of Research/Practice: Translational efforts to understand how cerebral aneurysms form, grow and rupture
Ashley McDonough, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: How microglia respond to inflammatory stimuli arising from injury or disease and the consequences of microglial activation in the central nervous system at all stages of the life span. Differential responses in microglia localized to white or gray matter regions of the brain and has developed an in vivo/ex vivo model of ischemic injury in white matter that has functional and histological outcomes.
Jeffrey Ojemann, MD
Area of Research/Practice: BCI using surface cortical recordings– electrocorticography (EcoG)
Katherine Prater, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: How microglia, the immune cells of the brain, respond to Alzheimer's Disease.
James Pridgeon, MHA
Area of Research/Practice: Research Administration, Global Health Research Capacity Building
Jan “Nino” Ramirez, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Animal models of human conditions including sleep apnea, SIDs, and epilepsy; optogenetics
Melanie Walker, MD
Area of Research/Practice: Autologous mitochondrial transplantation for acute ischemic stroke, intra-arterial chemotherapy and chemoembolysis of head and neck cancers, analysis of intravascular clots
Jonathan R. Weinstein, MD, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Acute management of stroke patients and sees patients in general neurology wards.
Miqin Zhang, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Nano-particles directed toward brain tumor treatment