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:
Richard G. Ellenbogen, MD, FACS (Program Director)
Area of Research/Practice: Molecular Imaging/Targeted treatments of brain tumors, TBI
Christine Mac Donald, PhD (Program Co-Director)
Area of Research/Practice: Advanced MRI methods applied to traumatic brain injury (TBI) research
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
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.
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
Jeffrey Ojemann, MD
Area of Research/Practice: BCI using surface cortical recordings– electrocorticography (EcoG)
Anoop Patel, MD
Area of Research/Practice: Analysis of Glioblastoma Cell Hierarchy with Single Cell Transcriptome Sequencing and Genome Wide Chromatin Profiling
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
Miqin Zhang, PhD
Area of Research/Practice: Nano-particles directed toward brain tumor treatment