天美传媒

Dr. Jerold Chun is professor and senior vice president of Neuroscience Drug Discovery at SBP. He completed his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Stanford University. He studies development and diseases of the brain.

Dr. Rita Cowell is Fellow and Chair of the Neuroscience Department within the Drug Discovery Division. In this role, she maintains an independently-funded research program, while overseeing the Neuroscience Department with the mission of discovering novel, mechanism-based approaches to treat individuals with neurodegenerative disorders. The research in the Cowell Lab aims to determine how intrinsic transcriptional programs underlying neuronal heterogeneity give rise to selective vulnerability in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson鈥檚 Disease, Huntington Disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease. Her research group is comprised of postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate trainees who are affiliated with Southern Research鈥檚 partner institution, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The lab is currently supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson鈥檚 Research.

Cowell received her undergraduate degree in biology in 1997 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2002 from the University of Michigan, where she also completed her postdoctoral work. She began her independent research laboratory as an assistant professor at UAB in 2006, rising through the ranks to associate professor. She also served as co-director of the Neuroscience Graduate Theme for the Program in Biomedical Sciences at UAB and associate director for Communications and Outreach for the Civitan International Research Center before joining Southern Research in 2017.  

Using a think tank-like model, she now directs the Neuroscience Department, utilizing its collective expertise in mechanisms of cell death/dysfunction and animal models of disease to identify and prioritize novel targets for small molecule identification using the unique high throughput capabilities of the Drug Discovery Division. Beyond these efforts to the institution, she actively facilitates interactions with local, national, and international groups interested in drug discovery and development in the neurosciences by serving as a liaison and consultant for extramural collaborations. Ongoing collaborations exist with scientists from UAB, HudsonAlpha in Huntsville, Alabama, and numerous other institutions, universities, and companies across the world. Cumulatively, her goal is to lead transformation of drug discovery in the field of neurodegeneration and to improve the lives of those suffering from these diseases.

Frank M. LaFerla, Ph.D., is the dean of the UCI School of Biological Sciences and a chancellor鈥檚 professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. He joined UCI in 1995 as an assistant professor and later served as chair of Neurobiology and Behavior from 2010 to 2013 and the director of the UCI Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND) from 2009 鈥� 2018.

Dean LaFerla is the current director of the National Institutes of Health funded UCI Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease Research Center and the co-director of the National Institute on Aging funded Model-AD at UCI, a research consortium to develop the next generation of model organisms to evaluate and cure Alzheimer鈥檚 disease.

His research focuses on understanding the pathogenesis of Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease, the most common form of dementia. His scholarly work has had a global influence on the field, as some of the model organisms he has generated have been distributed to over 150 researchers in more than 20 countries throughout the world. He has published more than 200 original peer-reviewed articles and has been listed among the top 1% cited researchers in his field.

Dean LaFerla has received many honors for his research accomplishments throughout his career, including the Promising Work Award from the Metropolitan Life Foundation for Medical Research, the Ruth Salta Investigator Achievement Award from the American Health Assistance Foundation, the Zenith Fellows Award from the Alzheimer鈥檚 Association and the UCI Innovators Award. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the American Neurological Association, the American Society for Cell Biology, the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Society for Neuroscience.

Dr. Youngil Lee, associate professor, teaches exercise physiology, sports nutrition and applied physiology in muscular development.

Lee鈥檚 research focuses on exercise-induced cardiac and neuroprotection using various advanced molecular and cellular research tools to elucidate novel protective mechanisms that potentially enhance human life.  

In previous research, he showed that endurance exercise protected hearts against ischemic heart disease by improving mitochondrial function and antioxidant capacity. Currently, he is investigating whether exercise-induced autophagy, a cellular cargo system by which dysfunctional organelles and dilapidated proteins are removed contributes to conferring cardioprotection. Recent research, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, revealed that daily physical activity regulates autophagy, which he believes is an essential process for cardioprotection. 

Lee and Yongchul Jang, a postdoctoral scholar at UWF, are also evaluating the potential protective effect of endurance exercise on neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson鈥檚 and Alzheimer鈥檚 disease. In recent collaborative work, published in Journal of Apoptosis, Lee and his colleagues reported that regular endurance exercise confers neuroprotection by generating new neurons in hippocampus, an area in charge of memory. He and Jang are currently developing a drug-induced Parkinson鈥檚 disease model and seeking a mechanism of how endurance exercise protects the brain against Parkinson鈥檚 disease. 

To further expand this line of research, he received an endowment from the Center for Research and Economic Opportunity to purchase a fluorescent microscope and an imaging system. 

He received a bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degree in exercise science from the Korean National Sport University in Seoul, Korea, and a second master鈥檚 degree in muscle physiology from the University of Texas at Austin, and doctorate in exercise biochemistry from the University of Florida. He was also a post-doctoral scholar in molecular cardiology in the University of California San Diego. 

Domenico Praticò is a Professor of Neural Science at the . He obtained his medical degree from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” School of Medicine, where he also completed a residency program in Internal Medicine. He continued his post-graduate training as a Research Fellow of the Center for Cardiovascular Science at the University College, Dublin, Ireland. Next, he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in the biology of aging at the University of Pennsylvania, where shortly after he was promoted to Assistant Professor, and later Associate Professor. In 2007 he joined Temple University, School of Medicine, as Associate Professor and Director of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Laboratory. Since 2011 he has been Professor of Neural Sciences at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. In December 2017, he was nominated the Scott Richards North Star Foundation Chair in Alzheimer’s research and appointed as the founding Director of the Alzheimer’s Center at Temple. His main area of investigation is clinical pharmacology with a special focus on the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in brain health, brain aging, and the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia. His early research includes pioneering work on the development of specific and sensitive methods to measure oxidative stress in vivo, which was instrumental for the first demonstration that brain oxidative stress is an early event in Alzheimer’s Disease pathogenesis. In addition, his work helped in defining the source and functional role that neuroinflammation plays in neurodegeneration. Pratico’s lab has been on the forefront in the effort to unravel the mechanisms responsible for the effect that dietary lifestyle has on brain health, providing evidence that extra virgin olive oil beneficial effects are secondary to the activation of important intracellular degradation pathways of unwanted materials. His group was the first to demonstrate that intracellular sorting and transport of protein is essential for neuronal health and that it can be a viable therapeutic target when it is dysfunctional. During these years, the main goal of his work has always been translating studies of the basic biology of brain aging and neurodegeneration into new therapeutics by implementing a comprehensive experimental approach which combines in vitro and in vivo models as well as human studies. Internationally known for his work on Alzheimer’s disease, brain health, aging and neurodegeneration, Dr. Pratico has authored over 290 original articles in high impact journals, and more than 25 chapters in thematic books. During his career, he has received many awards for his research accomplishments including the Irvine H. Page Award, Neuroscience Education and Research Award, Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and Dorothy Dillon Eweson Lectureship from the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Paul W. Eberman Faculty Research Award, and The Marconi Science Award.

Liana G. Apostolova, MD, MSc, FAAN is an IU Distinguished Professor and the Barbara and Peer Baekgaard Professor in Alzheimer's Disease Research and Professor in Neurology, Radiology, Medical and Molecular Genetics. She graduated Summa cum Laude from the Medical University, Sofia, Bulgaria in 1998, and completed Neurology residency training at the University of Iowa and a Dementia fellowship at UCLA. Dr. Apostolova is a prolific researcher. Her research focuses on early-onset (young-onset) Alzheimer's disease, the early symptomatic and presymptomatic stages of Alzheimer's Disease, and on the development and validation of sensitive imaging and genetic biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease and other dementing disorders. Dr. Apostolova is the principal investigator of many NIH, foundation, and industry-supported grants, and the recipient of many prestigious research awards. She is the lead principal investigator of the national Longitudinal Early-Onset AD Study (LEADS, R56/U01 AG057195) which aims to improve our understanding of and launch clinical trials in young-onset AD (age of onset <65y). She also directs the Clinical Core of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Indiana University.

Dr. Daniel Llano is a professor in the  at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology’s Neurotechnology for Memory and Cognition Group. He is also a physician-surgeon at Carle Illinois College of Medicine. His field of professional interest is systems neuroscience.
 studies the mechanisms by which complex sounds like speech are processed by the auditory system. He hypothesizes that the auditory system generates internal models of the sensory world and uses these models to extract meaning from complex sensory stimuli. One potential neuronal substrate for this generative model is the massive system of descending projections from the auditory cortex to virtually every level of the subcortical auditory system. These projections are critical for shaping the response properties of neurons in the auditory periphery, but very little is known about their functional organization. 

He employs electrophysiological, novel optical, and advanced anatomical approaches to study the projections from the auditory cortex to subcortical structures. One specific set of issues concerns the role of different cortical subnetworks in complex sound processing. For example, neurons in both cortical layer 5 and cortical layer 6 project to subcortical structures, and the neurons in these layers have very different intrinsic, integrative and synaptic properties. Llano's work explores the different roles that these groups of neurons play in processing complex sound. 

Llano also has a strong interest in studying the reorganization of such networks during neuronal disease. In particular, his lab is developing models of stroke and age-related auditory network dysfunction for the development of novel therapeutic approaches.
His patient care work is focused on aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
Research interests:


Computational biology




Imaging


Neurobiology


Optogenetics


Sensory processing


Aging-related diseases


Neurological and behavioral disorders


Education


M.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Nien-Pei Tsai is an  at the  and a researcher at the . 
An imbalance in neuronal and synaptic excitability is a common abnormality observed in patients with various psychiatric and neurological disorders, including autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. The dysregulation of excitability is thought to exacerbate disease symptoms. Identifying and understanding the mechanisms underlying the dysregulation of excitability could reveal novel therapeutic targets for these diseases. To achieve this goal, we utilize various approaches including molecular and cell biology, biochemistry, electrophysiology, and mouse genetics to understand the regulation of excitability homeostasis at synaptic, neuronal, network and system levels, and how the deficits of those affect behavior in diseases. 
Research Interests:


Neurobiology


Synaptic transmission


Learning and memory


Neurological and behavioral disorders


 
Current focuses of Tsai's lab include:
1. Studying activity-dependent translational control in fragile X syndrome
2. Exploring novel transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulators in neurodevelopment 
3. Determining the role of cellular stress response in neuronal plasticity
4. Characterizing the molecular mechanisms contributing to comorbid seizures in Alzheimer's disease
 
Education


B.S., National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2002


M.Sc., National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2004


Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 2009

Deborah Cory-Slechta, PhD, is a professor of Environmental Medicine, Neuroscience, and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Her research focuses on the impact environmental toxins, particularly ultra-fine particles found in air pollution, have on brain development and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Professor Cory-Slechta has served on numerous national review and advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Center for Toxicological Research, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control.