Dr. Francesca Bosetti, PhD
Program Director in the Neural Environment Cluster
NINDS
Dr. Bosetti joined NINDS in 2011 as a Program Director in the Neural Environment Cluster. Her areas of interest include ischemic stroke and blood-brain barrier. Prior to joining NINDS, Dr. Bosetti was a Principal Investigator and the Head of the Molecular Neuroscience Unit at the National Institute on Aging, where she investigated the arachidonic acid cascade and other mechanisms regulating microglial activation in excitotoxicity, neuroinflammation, and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Bosetti holds a Pharm.D. from the University of Pisa, Italy and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Experimental Medicine from “Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies” in Pisa, Italy. She has authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications.
Marion S. Buckwalter, MD, PhD
Associate Professor Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery
Stanford Medical School
Dr. Buckwalter is an Associate Professor in the departments of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery at Stanford Medical School, and a Deputy Director of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. She is board certified in Neurology and Neurocritical Care and also works in the Neurologic Intensive Care Unit at Stanford, where she takes care of people who have had strokes and other neurologic diseases. Her laboratory focuses on neuroinflammation and stroke outcomes. She developed the first mouse model of delayed post-stroke cognitive impairment after stroke, and current projects focus on better understanding underlying mechanisms in mice and humans. She is also interested in the intersection of vascular risk factors such as age and obesity on neuroinflammation and stroke outcomes, and on how brain astrocytes and microglia orchestrate the neuroinflammatory response to stroke.
S. Tom Carmichael, MD, PhD
Professor & Chair, Department of Neurology
UCLA
Thomas Carmichael is a neurologist and neuroscientist in the Departments of Neurology and of Neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Carmichael is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology, co-Director of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Center and co-Director of the Regenerative Medicine Theme in the David Geffen School of Medicine. He has active laboratory and clinical interests in stroke and neurorehabilitation and how the brain repairs from injury. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University School of Medicine in 1993 and 1994, and completed a Neurology residency at Washington University School of Medicine, serving as Chief Resident. Dr. Carmichael was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellow at UCLA from 1998-2001. He has been on the UCLA faculty since 2001. Dr. Carmichael’s laboratory studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural repair after stroke and other forms of brain injury. This research focuses on the processes of axonal sprouting and neural stem cell and progenitor responses after stroke, and on neural stem cell transplantation. Dr. Carmichael is an attending physician on the General Neurology and outpatient clinical services at UCLA. Dr. Carmichael has published important papers on stroke recovery that have defined mechanisms of plasticity and repair. These include the fact that the stroke produces partially damage circuits that limit recovery, but can be restored to normal functioning with newly applied experimental drugs. His work has identified a novel brain “growth program” that is activated by stroke and leads to the formation of new connections. These studies have also identified how this growth program changes with age, and how specific molecules in the aged brain block the formation of new connections and of recovery. This and other work has led to new directions in stroke therapeutics, including therapies with stem cell and tissue engineering applications. Dr. Carmichael is in the midst of stroke stem cell development applications with the FDA and with biotechnology companies.
Jin-Moo Lee, MD, PhD
Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology
Head Cerebrovascular Disease Section
Washington University School of Medicine
Dr. Lee is the Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology, with joint appointments in Radiology, and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University School of Medicine. He is director of the Cerebrovascular Disease Section in the Department of Neurology; and Co-Director of the Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University. He has authored more than 200 research articles, chapters, reviews and editorials on stroke and Alzheimer’s Disease, and the interface of these two diseases of the elderly. His research spans the translational spectrum from cell and animal models of neurological diseases to clinical studies involving genetics and multimodal neuroimaging. Dr. Lee has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2000. A major focus of Dr. Lee’s academic career has been research mentoring—he has mentored more than 10 K-awardees—and has received several awards for mentorship, including the Sven Eliasson Award for Teaching Excellence and the Washington University Distinguish Faculty Mentorship Award. In addition, he has received several awards for research excellence—most recently the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award (R37 Merit Award). He graduated from Yale College with a degree in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, then attended Weill Cornell Medical College, earning an MD and PhD in neuroscience. After completing residency training at the University of Pennsylvania, he completed a neurovascular fellowship at Washington University, where he subsequently joined the faculty in the Department of Neurology.
Eng H. Lo, PhD
Professor of Radiology and Neuroscience
Harvard
Eng H. Lo received a BS in engineering at Yale, a PhD in biophysics from Berkeley, and completed a neuroscience fellowship at Stanford. In 1991, Dr. Lo joined the Massachusetts General Hospital where he is currently Professor of Radiology and Neuroscience at Harvard.
Louise McCullough, MD, PhD
Professor and Chair: Department of Neurology & Vice-chair International Stroke Conference
UT Houston
Dr. Louise McCullough is a physician-scientist and a practicing vascular neurologist with clinical expertise in sex/gender disparities, stroke prevention, acute stroke treatments and outcome assessment. She is well recognized for her work in cerebral vascular disease and is known for her research identifying sex differences in cell death pathways during stroke, which have now been shown to be a major factor in the response to ischemic insult. Working closely with the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR) and the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH), she was instrumental in the National Institute of Health’s requirement to include female animals in basic and translational studies. Among Dr. McCullough’s many honors and awards are the prestigious National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award and the Inaugural American Heart Association (AHA) Outstanding Stroke Research Mentor Award. She completed her PhD in Neuroscience and medical degree from the University of Connecticut. She continued her training at Johns Hopkins completing a neurology residency in 2000 followed by a fellowship in cerebrovascular disease and stroke (2000-2002). After completing her training, she joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins Hospital and began her translational research career. She became an Instructor and then an Assistant Professor in Neurology at Hopkins. Dr. McCullough relocated to The University of Connecticut Health Center in 2004 and over the next eight years rose to the rank of Professor. She became the Director of Stroke Research and Education at Hartford Hospital, and developed one of the largest stroke centers in New England. In 2015, she relocated to the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston as the Chair of Neurology and Chief of Neurology at Memorial Hermann Hospital-TMC.
Mary Pellymounter PhD
Program Director in the Division of Translational Research
NINDS
Mary Pelleymounter is a Program Director in the Division of Translational Research at NINDS. She leads the Biomarker Development Program at NINDS, and is a scientific project manager for the Blueprint Neurotherapeutics program. She has over 25 years of experience in scientific research and over 20 years of experience in drug discovery and development. Mary Ann’s scientific training is in the field of behavioral neuroscience with a focus on age-related cognitive dysfunction, neurodegeneration and neuropharmacology. She received her PhD at the University of Colorado and conducted her post-doctoral research at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) in the laboratory of Dr. Michela Gallagher. Following her post-doctoral work, Dr. Pelleymounter focused her research on drug discovery and development in the therapeutic areas of neurodegeneration and neuropsychiatry until the mid-1990s when she shifted her research emphasis to obesity and metabolic disease therapeutics. Since that time, Dr. Pelleymounter moved to scientific leadership roles, directing in vivo pharmacology at Neurocrine Biosciences and leading the biology drug discovery effort for obesity therapeutics at Bristol Myers Squibb. During Dr. Pelleymounter’s tenure as Director of Obesity Therapeutics, her department progressed multiple compounds into clinical development and helped to restructure the focus of their drug discovery efforts to better complement the existing efforts in diabetes and metabolic disease. Dr. Pelleymounter has over 60 published original research articles, reviews and book chapters, is the author of multiple published patents relating to the discovery and use of leptin and has received numerous research grants and awards in the fields of cognition, aging and neuropsychiatry.
Miguel Perez-Pinzon, PhD
Processor and Vice-Chair & Department of Neuroscience
U. Miami, Chair International Stroke Conference
Dr. Perez-Pinzon is the Peritz Scheinberg Professor of Neurology and Vice-Chair for Basic Science at the Department of Neurology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Perez-Pinzon directs the Peritz Scheinberg Cerebral Vascular Disease Research Laboratories at the University of Miami. His research is focused on studying brain metabolism in pathological states. Specifically, his research expertise is in the area of cerebral ischemia, which results from cardiac arrest or a stroke. Different directions have emerged from his studies, which encompass the areas of vascular, mitochondrial, synaptic and cognitive dysfunction that ensue following cerebral ischemia. Over the last 21 years, his laboratory has investigated the signaling pathways that lead to neuroprotection against cerebral ischemia following ischemic preconditioning (IPC). He has been studying compounds such as resveratrol (a polyphenol found in red wine) and certain chemicals that activate protein kinase c isoforms to pharmacologically precondition in vivo and in vitro to lessen ischemia-induced neuronal damage. Another area of intensive research in his group is that of mitochondrial dysfunction which ensues following stroke or cardiac arrest. His group has had significant contributions on the signaling pathways that lead to mitochondrial dysfunction and apoptosis. Another important area of research by his group is that of the effect of Physical Exercise on cognitive improvements following stroke and cardiac arrest in animal models.
