Sami Barmada, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Neurology at THE University of Michigan
Dr. Sami Barmada received his PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis, where he investigated prion diseases with Dr. David Harris. His neurology residency, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), gave him the opportunity to train with some of the premier clinicians and scientists in neurodegenerative diseases. During residency and continuing in a postdoctoral fellowship, he worked with Dr. Steve Finkbeiner at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, where he established faithful model systems for the study of ALS and FTD pathogenesis, including one of the first human neuronal models of familial ALS and FTD. Dr. Barmada arrived at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Neurology in 2013 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.
Dr. Barmada’s research takes advantage of a broad toolkit of innovative technologies and methods involving fluorescence microscopy, computer science and engineering, bioinformatics, genome engineering, and molecular biology to investigate important yet unanswered questions in neurodegenerative diseases. His work, centering on critical abnormalities in RNA and protein metabolism in ALS and FTD, combines basic biology with translational research and technology development. Dr. Barmada serves on the executive advisory board of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research and acts on the scientific advisory boards of the Live Like Lou Foundation and Synapticure, Inc. He has taken an active role in their efforts to raise awareness of ALS in the community and participates in several local and national fundraising efforts.
11:00 am | Introduction
11:10 am | Sami Barmada, MD, PhD (University of Michigan)
“TDP43 mislocalization and aggregation in ALS and FTD”
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm | Lunch
12:30 pm - 1:30 | Poster Session
1:35 pm | Rong Grace Zhai, PhD (University of Chicago)
"Targeting NAD+ metabolic pathway to protect against neurodegeneration in ALS/FTD"
2:05 pm - 2:15 pm | Nidhi Sharma, PhD (Kratsios/Roos Labs)
"New C. elegans and mouse models of C9ORF72 ALS/FTD"
2:15 pm | Coffee Break
2:35 pm | Zicheng Wang (He Lab)
"Computational discovery of risk variants and genes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis"
2:50 pm | Konstantinos Tsioras, PhD (Kratsios/Roos Labs)
"Modeling the EBF3 neurodevelopmental syndrome with human stem cell technology"
3:05 pm | Closing Remarks
Luke Frietze (Pan Lan)
"MesoRNA transcriptome and epitranscriptome in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis"
Astra Hwang (Staley Lab)
"Unraveling splicing dynamics: Integrating nuclear RNA-seq and co-transcriptional lariat-seq to decode mechanisms of ALS"
Jerry Lee (Lee Lab)
"Stress granules protect cells against ALS C9orf72 repeat-induced pathogenesis in a C. elegans Model"
Carlos Buen Abad Najar, PhD (Li Lab)
Natalie Ortiz-Vega, PhD (Zhai Lab)
"NAD synthase NMNAT protects against DPR neurotoxicity in a Drosophila model of ALS"
Xiangbin Ruan, PhD (Zhang Lab)
"AGE-seq: Antibody-Guided RNA Editing and Sequencing to Identify RNA-binding Protein Targets"
Theron Russell, PhD (Green Lab)
"Imaging of synapses to probe mechanisms of neurodegeneration"
Annika Sharma (Heckscher Lab)
Zhuoyue Shi, PhD (Zhuang Lab)
"Does m6A mRNA methylation protect against or contribute to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?"
Parisa Tajalli Tehrani Valverde (Carrillo Lab)
"Examining the role of peripheral perisynaptic glia at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction in ALS pathology"
Donglei Zhang, PhD (Lee Lab)
"Investigating the roles of stress granules in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathogenesis with repeat expansion of C9orf72"