Funded Research Projects
NeuroDiscovery | Seed Grant
Lead Researcher(s): Alexander Dunn, Thomas Sudhof
The results of this highly interdisciplinary project will test the innovative hypothesis that molecular-scale mechanical signals sculpt synapse formation and will shed light on how latrophilin signaling regulates synaptogenesis in the context of both neurodevelopment and neuropsychiatric disease.
NeuroHealth | Seed Grant
Lead Researcher(s): Carla Shatz, Anca M. Pasca, MD
Maternal infection is linked to increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. This proposal examines how virus-associated cytokines, specifically interferons, affect human neurons modeled in brain organoids or studied directly in fetal brain samples.
NeuroEngineering | Seed Grant
We propose a new magnetic sensor that is sensitive to picoTesla-scale fields, a localized magnetic stimulator with small form-factor, and a seamless integration of both systems for applications in experimental and clinical neuroscience.
NeuroHealth | Seed Grant
Lead Researcher(s): Xinnan Wang, Michael Bassik
We will comprehensively define the gene network associated with mitochondrial dysfunction in Parkinson's disease using a cutting-edge technology, CRISPR, to understand how these nerve cells die in PD and how we can reverse the cell death to treat the disease.
NeuroEngineering | Seed Grant
Lead Researcher(s): Guosong Hong, Xiaoke Chen
We aim to develop a noninvasive method to produce on-demand and dynamically programmable light emission patterns throughout the entire brain of live mice. The emission patterns can be controlled by brain-penetrant focused ultrasound and switched with millisecond precision for rapid brain-wide...
NeuroHealth | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Erin Kunz
Many neurological injuries and diseases such as brainstem stroke and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) result in severe speech impairment, drastically reducing quality of life. Recent progress in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has allowed these individuals to communicate, but performance is...
NeuroDiscovery | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Tamara Chan
In a process called tiling, homeostatic microglia homogenously organize in a grid-like fashion to achieve efficient surveillance of the brain. The molecular mechanisms underlying tiling are unknown. I hypothesize that microglia use cell-surface proteins to sense density of neighboring microglia,...
NeuroEngineering | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Yixiu Zhao
We propose a novel framework for efficient Bayesian cognition called Inference via Abstraction (IvA), which learns to approximate complex world models with simpler abstractions that capture main dependencies, but leverage structure in the prior distribution for efficient inference. We instantiate...
NeuroDiscovery | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Kyrstyn Ong
Although ultrasonic neurostimulation has the potential to outperform traditional treatments for many debilitating neurological disorders, it remains unclear how ultrasound affects nervous system activity on the molecular level. Since ultrasound acts on a molecular scale in a macroscopic environment...
NeuroDiscovery | Research Accelerator
The NeuroPlant Initiative aims to leverage a botanical armamentarium to manipulate the brain — by building a pipeline to explore chemicals synthesized in plants as potential new treatments for neurological disease and as a window into the chemistry of the brain.
