Education

• Neurology Residency Program, University of California, San Francisco (2022)
• M.D./Ph.D., Medical Scientist Training Program and Neuroscience Graduate Program, Washington University in St. Louis (2018)
• B.A., Molecular and Cell Biology - Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley (2009)

Research interests

Several neurodegenerative diseases feature the early loss of specific neuronal subtypes, and the deposition of disease-associated aggregated proteins such as tau or TDP-43 in these neurons. In behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), von Economo neurons are lost early in the course of the disease, and accumulate aggregated tau, TDP-43, or FUS. Using a combination of human histopathologic studies and CRISPR-based screening techniques, I aim elucidate the mechanisms that underlie this selective vulnerability, and to identify the pathways that regulate TDP-43 mislocalization in bvFTD and other related diseases.