Josh Berke's laboratory at UCSF investigates brain mechanisms involved in learning, motivation and decision-making, and how these mechanisms go awry in disorders such as drug addiction, Parkinson's Disease and Huntington's Disease. (see www.berkelab.org). He is also Director of the Alcohol and Addiction Research Group, and holds the Rudi Schmid Distinguished Professorship in Neurology.
Dr. Feeney is a Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health at UCSF. She is the Principal Investigator of several NIH-funded projects focused on the immune response to malaria and CMV in infants and children. Dr. Feeney is board certified in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and provides clinical care for children with complex infections at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, where she also teaches students and housestaff.
Ray Swanson is a clinician-scientist with joint appointments in the UCSF Department of Neurology and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. His research explores bioenergetics and oxidative signaling in neurological disease. His studies in the area of stroke aim to identify ways to mitigate the dendritic and axonal ischemic injury, and in particular injury caused by neuronal NADPH oxidase and cofilin-actin rod formation. Work pertaining to Parkinson's disease aims to identify interactions between neuronal redox state and alpha-synuclein aggregation.
Dr. Piao is a physician-scientist with a focus in both neonatology and developmental neuroscience. She received her PhD with Alan Bernstein from University of Toronto, before completing her Pediatric residency at NYU and Neonatology fellowship as well as a post-doctoral fellowship with Chris Walsh at Harvard Medical School. Working in neonatal intensive care unit and laboratory, Dr. Piao’s career follows the bedside-to-bench-to-bedside paradigm.
Dr. Suneil Koliwad is an Expert in Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, serving as Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at UCSF Health. His lab, based in the UCSF Diabetes Center, focuses on the intersection of nutrition, inflammation, and metabolic tissue function in the context of normal physiology, and diseases such as obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and in the course of aging.
As a pediatric gastroenterologist and physician scientist, I am keenly aware of the challenges faced by our pediatric population. The intestinal epithelium comprises the human body’s greatest environmentally exposed surface and is the largest sensory and endocrine organ. My research utilizes human intestinal organoids and animal models to understand how the intestine senses and responds to both regular and inflammatory stimuli.
Overview
Lennart Mucke’s laboratory aims to unravel how major neurologic and psychiatric conditions cause cognitive deficits, behavioral abnormalities, and other disabling symptoms, with an emphasis on dementias, epilepsy, and autism.
Our group uses mouse models and brain cell cultures to study disease-causing factors and pathways at molecular, cellular, network, and behavioral levels. Such models are also used to identify and validate novel entry points for therapeutic interventions.
Physician-Scientist Career Development Program Council Member
Medicine
Our laboratory is interested in understanding how B cell behavior is regulated after encounter with either “self” or “foreign” antigens. We postulate that overlapping mechanisms are at play in both scenarios. The lab seeks to define the rules that govern B cell responses to specific features of foreign antigens, including antigen affinity, valency and co-stimulatory signals. We are also interested in how the clonal composition of both the pre- and post-immune B cell repertoires is regulated.
Physician-Scientist Career Development Program Council Member
Pediatrics
Our laboratory focuses on understanding the causes of heart disease and on using knowledge of cardiac developmental pathways to devise novel therapeutic approaches for human cardiac disorders. Specifically, we study the molecular events regulating early and late developmental decisions that instruct progenitor cells to adopt a cardiac cell fate and subsequently fashion a functioning heart. We focus on transcriptional and post-transcriptional steps, including those involving microRNAs.
Physician-Scientist Career Development Program Council Member
Neurology
Dr. Ken Nakamura is a neurologist who specializes in diagnosing and treating patients with Parkinson’s disease at the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Clinic. He also runs a research laboratory at the Gladstone Institutes, where he investigates how disruptions of mitochondria—the “power centers” of cells that convert nutrients into energy—contribute to the development and progression of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
