SPEAKERS

Rita Balice-Gordon, PhD

Muna Therapeutics

Dr. Balice-Gordon is the Chief Executive Officer of Muna Therapeutics. She is a Director on the Board of Collegium Pharmaceutical, and a Director on the Board of Capsida BioTherapeutics. Rita serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several biotech companies. Prior, Rita was the Global Head, Rare and Neurologic Diseases Research Therapeutic Area at Sanofi, Inc. for several years. Her main focus is the cellular and molecular interactions among neurons, their targets and the surrounding glia that mediate and modulate synapse formation and function during neural development.

Richard Kramer, PhD

UC Berkeley

Dr. Kramer is a Professor of Neurobiology in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology.  His research includes the study of photochemical tools for understanding and re-animating neural signaling. His current projects investigate optical control of specific ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors and translating photoswitches into drugs for re-animating vision in the blind.

Gina Turrigiano, PhD

Brandeis University

Dr. Turrigiano is the Joseph Levitan Professor of Vision Science. Her lab studies mechanisms of homeostatic synaptic and intrinsic plasticity, and the role of these stabilizing mechanisms in the development and function of the cortex. Her work has been instrumental in demonstrating the existence of "self-tuning" mechanisms that allow neurons and circuits to adjust their excitability to prevent states of hyper- or hypoexcitability that underlie brain disorders such as epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders.

Chris Miller PhD

BRANDEIS uNIVERSITY

Dr. Miller is a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry. His work focused on ion channels- the proteins that make electricity in all types of cells. His lab tries to figure out how ion channels work through a combination of high-resolution electrical recording methods and x-ray crystallography to determine their molecular structures.

Dr. Leonard Kaczmarek

Yale University

Dr. Kaczmarek is a Professor of Pharmacology and Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine. He served as Chairman of the Yale Department of Pharmacology from 1989 to 1998. His group discovered the genes for many of the ion channel proteins that are directly responsible for the electrical excitability of nerve cells. He is currently investigating the way mutations in these proteins in humans are responsible for several forms of intellectual disability and autism. Dr. Kaczmarek has authored or edited several books, and is co-author with Dr. Irwin Levitan of the textbook The Neuron.