Structural Biology

Grace E Stutzmann focuses on early mechanisms of neurodegenerative disorders. She received her PhD from New York University, Center for Neural Science and

completed her Postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and UC Irvine. She is currently an Associate Professor at Rosalind Franklin University/The Chicago Medical

School and serves as the Director for the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease and Therapeutics. Her research investigates effects of calcium signaling dysregulations

associated with AD on neuronal physiology, synaptic transmission, and histopathology. She uses transgenic mice expressing human mutations that cause familial AD and

employs techniques such as in vitro electrophysiology and 2-photon calcium imaging to study activity in neurons, in addition to immuno-based assays, molecular biology

and behavioral approaches. Her research has shown that specifi c calcium-mediated signaling pathways are dysregulated in AD and over time, facilitate amyloid plaques

and tangles formation, interfere with memory encoding circuits, and eventually can kill the cell.