SFARI

Emmanuel Mignot is the Craig Reynolds Professor of Sleep Medicine at Stanford University. He discovered that human narcolepsy is caused by an autoimmune loss of approximately 20,000 hypothalamic neurons secreting the wake-promoting peptide hypocretin (also known as orexin). He also identified HLA-DQB1*06:02 and T-cell receptor genes as major susceptibility genes, which act together to promote a selective autoimmune process triggered by influenza A. Mignot has received numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

John Rubenstein is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. The goal of his laboratory’s research is to elucidate fundamental mechanisms that regulate development of the forebrain, with a focus on the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia. The studies in his laboratory also extend into other regions of the embryo, including the developing face. Whenever possible, Rubenstein attempts to investigate whether disruption of these mechanisms underlie human disorders, such as autism, schizophrenia, intellectual disability, epilepsy and craniofacial disorders. The overarching hope is that these studies provide insights and new inroads into diagnosis, prevention and treatment of these disorders.

Evan Feinberg is an assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy and a member of the Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience and the Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.

He received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University, where he worked with Craig Hunter on the molecular mechanisms underlying systemic spread of RNA interference in C. elegans. His doctoral studies were conducted at The Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Cori Bargmann, where he developed GRASP (GFP Reconstitution Across Synaptic Partners), a method that enables in vivo visualization of synapses between defined neurons.

Feinberg pursued postdoctoral training at Harvard University with Markus Meister, where he performed the first two-photon calcium imaging study of the superior colliculus and discovered its columnar functional architecture. The Feinberg lab studies sensorimotor integration using optical, genetic and behavioral methods in mice and has received research support from the E.M. Ziegler, Brain & Behavior Research and the Whitehall Foundation in addition to receiving a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award.