Michael Lodato, PhD (UMass Chan Medical School) and Michael Miller, MD, PhD (Brigham and Women’s Hospital), former Walsh Lab post-docs, received NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards that support innovative research of early stage investigators. Congrats!

Emre Caglayan​​​​​​​ joined our lab after completing his PhD at UT Southwestern where he studied the “Molecular Underpinnings of Human Brain Evolution and Cognition at Cellular Resolution” in the Konopka Lab.

Xuyu Qian, a postdoc fellow has received the Rising Stars in Engineering in Health Award from Cornell University, in partnership with Johns Hopkins and Columbia University. Congrats, Xuyu!

Maya Talukdar, a MD/PhD student in the lab, received an unconditional pass on her PQE and is now a PhD candidate in Biomedical Informatics. Congrats Maya!

Zinan Zhou won the Poster Award at the 2023 Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Related Motor Neuron Diseases Gordon Research Conference (GRC). The ALS and Related Motor Neuron Diseases GRC is a premier, international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research.

He also recently got the American Heart Association 2023 Career Development Award. This grant supports highly promising healthcare and academic professionals, in the early years of one’s first professional appointment, to explore innovative questions or pilot studies that will provide preliminary data and training necessary to assure the applicant’s future success as a research scientist. Congrats Zinan!

Sattar Khoshkhoo was one of the Grant Recipients for the Burroughs Wellcome Fellowship. Congrats Sattar!

Ben Finander, a grad student with the Walsh Lab just got a clear pass on his PQE! Congrats Ben!

Norma Hylton, PhD Candidate was selected to be a Neuroscience Scholars Program Fellow. The Neuroscience Scholars Program (NSP) is a two-year online training program open to underrepresented graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Congratulations Norma!

Check out this article on Eduardo Maury, PhD – a former PhD Student and alumni of the Walsh Lab.

Check out this editorial by Alica Goldman, MD on Sattar Khooshoo’s, MD recent publication. Publication titled, “Contributions of Somatic Ras/Raf/Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Variants in the Hippocampus in Drug-Resistant Mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy”

Sara Bizzotto (a recent alumni of the Walsh Lab) was one of the awardees for the FENS EJN Young Investigator Prize. The prize is awarded to early career researchers in recognition of their outstanding scientific contribution to any area of neuroscience. Congrats Sara!

Janet Song was named as Leading Edge Fellow. The Leading Edge Fellows Program supports outstanding women and gender-minority postdocs in the life sciences as they transition toward independent research. Congratulations, Janet!

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program funds talented graduate students across nearly all scientific disciplines (>100 subfields) in order to support the development of future scientists and engineers in the United States. The NSF awards ~2,100 graduate research fellowships each year. Congratulations Ben!

Michael Greenberg is announced as one of the recipients of the Lundbeck Foundation’s Brain Prize 2023. Each year 10 million DKK (about 1.4 mil USD) to one or more brain researchers who have had a ground breaking impact on brain research. Congratulations Mike!

Check out this Research Highlight with NIA on Michael Miller!

Check out this article on Washington Post about Brain Development, featuring Chris Walsh.

How does the brain age across the lifespan? New Studies offer clues.

Check out this Podcast that Chris did with Alan Alda for the Clear+Vivid series

Three former Walsh Lab trainees made the Spectrum News “40 under 40” for future leaders in Autism Research! Congratulations to Caroline Dias (now Asst. Professor at University of Colorado), Ryan Doan (now Asst. Professor at Harvard and Boston Children’s Hosital) and Alissa D’Gama (now Clinical Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital).

Check out this interview with Dr. Christopher Walsh with MedLink Neurology on his perspectives on genetic mechanisms in the developing and aging brain!

Interview link: Here

We are excited to share that Dr. Christopher Walsh has been awarded the Kalvi Prize in Neuroscience!

Dr. Walsh received this honor for his breakthrough research in identifying genetic mutations that underlie disorders affecting the cerebral cortex, especially in areas of somatic mosaicism.

Read more about Dr. Christopher Walsh’s journey to the Kalvi Prize here: Revealing the Genes that Shape the Human Brain

Andrea Kriz is now an Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow of The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research. The JCC Fund supports between twenty-five and thirty new three-year fellowships each year. It was established for the purpose of supporting research into the causes and treatment of cancer and takes a broad approach to the study of cell growth and development. Congrats Andrea!

Zinan Zhou has received the Lefler Postdoctoral Fellowship from Harvard Medical School. The Lefler fund by The Edward R and Anne G. Lefler Center, supports faculty, postdoctoral fellows and predoctoral students doing innovative studies that shed light on neurogenesis, neurodegeneration and other neurological diseases.

David Exposito-Alonso was just awarded the EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship Award! The fellowship supports excellent postdoctoral researchers throughout Europe and the world.

Sattar was just awarded the NIH NINDS K08 Award. The award is designed to provide the opportunity for promising clinician scientist with demonstrated aptitude to develop into independent investigators, or faculty members to pursue research.

Diane Shao was just awarded the NIH NINDS K08 award and the Hearst Foundation Fellowship! The Hearst Foundation was established at Harvard Medical School on behalf of handicapped children. The award goes to those doing research in the area of brain development with particular emphasis on factors important for the prevention of neuromotor disabilities and on the fundamental neurobiological mechanisms that underlie health and disease during the process of development.

We are excited to have Benjamin Finander, a PhD Student join our team in the Walsh Lab! Welcome Ben!

Check out this article by Williams A. Haseltine.

Study Uncovers A New Way To Think About Alzheimer’s Disease

Taehwan Shin successfully defended his PhD, titled “Intersecting evolutionary and medical genetics to understand human brain development and disease”.

Maria Lehtinen (Former Walsh Lab Alumni) has been promoted to Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School!

Congratulations to Rebecca Yeh who was accepted into the Master’s in Genetic Counseling Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions! Rebecca is incredibly excited to join the community at the MGH IHP and launch her career as a future genetic counselor! We wish her all the best in her studies and future endeavors!

Brigham, Children’s Hospital researchers find increased mutation in Alzheimer’s patient brain cells

Marc was previously working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh Lab in 2020-2021, where his research focused on primate brain cortex evolution, before returning to complete his medical studies at the University of Alberta (UofA). He graduated from the UofA medicine program in 2022, and is currently pursuing his pediatric neurology residency with the Boston Combined Residency Program between the Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital. He enjoys learning about brain development and working with people of low socioeconomic status. Stay tuned to discover how he plans to sub-sub-specialize!

Eduardo Maury successfully defends his PhD, titled “Somatic mutations in the human brain: Tracing the origins of cancer and schizophrenia”.

Shyam Akula successfully defended his PhD, titled “The Genetics of Cortical Folding Disorders: From Mechanisms to Diagnosis”.

The Allen Discovery Center for Human Brain Evolution received $10 million awards to fund the next four-year phases of their work​! The Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School brings together three research laboratories to study the genetic, molecular, and evolutionary forces that have given rise to the spectacular capacities of the human brain. The work over the past four years has established a huge database of ancient human DNA that has given rise to new insights not only about our biology and evolution, but our cultural and social histories as well.

Diane Shao was awarded the Child Health Research Center Scholar. This funding opportunity is awarded to applicants that propose to support a program of mentored institutional career development programs for junior facility investigators who have recently completed postgraduate clinical training in a subspecialty area of Pediatrics and are committed to launching an independent research career.

Christopher A. Walsh, the Bullard Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, will share the 2021 Gruber Neuroscience Prize with Christine Petit of the Institut Pasteur and Collège de France for their groundbreaking work in revealing the genetic and molecular mechanisms behind inherited neurodevelopmental disorders.

Walsh, who is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is receiving the award for his novel and fundamental insights into the development of the cerebral cortex and into the molecular origins of brain disorders, including inherited forms of epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders. Petit is receiving the award for her seminal contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms involved in hearing and hearing loss.

To view the award video and photo gallery of the prize:
https://gruber.yale.edu/2021-gruber-neuroscience-prize

Xuyu Qian, postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh lab, has been named to the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science. Every year, the Forbes magazine recognizes 30 young leaders each in twenty categories. The award recognizes Xuyu’s pioneering work in developing human brain organoid technologies to model brain development and diseases.

Ming Hui Chen has been selected as an American College of Cardiology Sandra J. Lewis Mid-Career Women’s Leader Fellow. The program empowers and provides mid-career women cardiovascular physicians with the essential skills, tools, and dedicated support to flourish during this phase of the career journey.

Eduardo Maury’s poster was selected as the Best Basic Science Poster in the tumor section at the Congress of Neurological Surgery. His poster described the work on clonal oncogenic mutations in the normal brain.

Javier Ganz was selected for a “Reviewer’s Choice” poster award to be presented at the ASHG meeting this October as a Poster Talk. Reviewer’s choice awards are scored in the top 10% of all poster abstracts, and Poster Talks are a subset of that 10%.

Michael Miller was a selected as a recipient of the Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award!  DDCF’s mission is to improve the quality of peoples lives through grants supporting the performing arts, enviromental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the vultureal and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. Mike is receiving the award for his work on “Early Mechanisms of Genomic Somatic Mutation in Alzheimer’s Disease Single Neurons”.

Rebecca Andersen received the Autism Speaks Postdoctoral Fellowship. Autism Speaks is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting solutions, across the spectrum and throughout the life span, for the needs of people with autism and their families. Becky’s project will investigate the role of long noncoding RNAs (IncRNAs) in human brain development and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The International Society for Stem Cell Research has awarded its ISSCR Abstract Merit Award for the abstract, “Landmarks of Human Embryonic Development Inscribed in Somatic Mutations”, to Sara Bizzotto, postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh Lab. The honor will be presented at the ISSCR 2021 Annual Meeting.

Sara Bizzotto, a current postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh Lab has been awarded the European Commission Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions Individual Fellowship 2020 supporting the reutnr and reintegration of European researchers from outside Europe. She will join Dr. Stéphanie Baulac group at Paris Brain Institute in September 2021 to study genetic causes and pathophysiological mechanisms of epileptic focal cortical dysplasia.

H. Westley Phillips, MD received the R25 grant for his project ‘Identifying Somatic Mutationsn in Pediatric Temporal Lope Epilepsy’ and will join the Walsh Lab in July 2021. Phillips, a PGY6 neurosurgery resident at UCLA, aims to investigate the genetic footprint of epilepsy in children to prepare him for a career as a pediatric epilepsy surgeon-scientist.

Alisa Mo, current postdoctoral fellow in the Walsh Lab received the R25 research training award from the NIH/NINDS. The award is to support residents develop skills and training to foster careers as physician-scientists.

Ellen DeGennaro, a PhD graduate student in the Walsh lab was awarded the Suprina and Panos Eurnekian Biotechnology Fellowship from MIT. She also received the Simmons Award at the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging for the 3rd year running! Way to go!

Xuyu Qian, current postdoctoral fellow in Walsh Lab was awarded the 2020 Brain Diseases Prize from UZH Foundation!
The brain diseases fund are used by the UZH Foundation for annual recognition prizes for young scientists. Every year 10,00 to 20,000 francs are awarded for particularly remarkable reasearch achievements during the doctoral studies in the field of brain diseases.

Ellen DeGennaro’s “Cerebellar Checkers” is a Harvard Brain Science Initiative 2019 Beauty of the Brain Image Contest winner! See also the colorful submissions of research assistants, Lariza Rento and Katherine Morillo.

Alissa D’Gama, MD, PhD matched at the Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship Training Program.

Xiaochang Zhang, PhD, former Walsh Lab fellow, receives NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Gilad Evrony, MD, PhD, former Walsh Lab graduate, receives NIH Director’s Early Independence Award.

The Next Generation Leaders Program at the Allen Institute for Brain Science aims to formally recognize the importance of fresh and creative contributions to neuroscience from early-stage researchers. Mike will serve a three-year term as a Next Generation Leader, taking part in Advisory Council Meetings at the Allen Institute in Seattle. He is incredibly honored to receive this opportunity as he culminates a fantastic postdoctoral fellowship here at the Walsh lab to embark on a new journey as the head of his own lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA!

Every once in a while as a team bonding event we decided to create a challenge as to who can take the spiciest wings ever. Congratulations to our “Hot Ones” winners in our recent lab social! They can definitely handle the heat!