George has experience managing routine laboratory operations within the neurogenetics branch for over 10 years. George uses biochemical approaches to analyze alterations in patient derived tissue and fluid samples.
Dr. AlQahtani completed his neurology residency and neuromuscular fellowship at Case Western Reserve University. He completed board certification in neuromuscular medicine in 2021. Dr. AlQahtani’s research interest involves the development of ultrasound as a biomarker in patients with neuromuscular disease. The characterization of sensitive biomarkers capable of detecting changes in nerve and muscular pathology over time would be a valuable tool for better understanding nerve and muscle contributions to disease and testing candidate therapies in future studies.
Andrew Nguyen received his BS in Biology from Duke University in 2022. His current research is focused on using iPSC-derived neurons and CRISPRi screens to investigate the genetic pathways that may underlie motor neuron vulnerability in neuromuscular diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress-1 (SMARD1).
Mmasinachi (Marie) Ezuma-Ngwu is a first year IRTA Postbaccalaureate Fellow. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health Science. Marie is analyzing the skeletal muscle transcriptome and motor neuron biology in Spinal and Bulbar Muscular Atrophy (SBMA).
Jahan received a BS in Neuroscience from William & Mary in 2023. His research uses siRNA to achieve allele-specific knockdown of mutant senataxin in iPSC-derived models of lower motor neurons to characterize the changes in gene expression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 4 (ALS4) patient samples.