Program Directors oversee the research activities in one or more parts of the Institute's research funding program, managing a portfolio of grants and contracts and coordinating program efforts in these specifically defined areas of neuroscience research. Please reach out to individual Program Directors for more information about specific opportunities.
Use the quick search below to find your program director based on your research keywords.
Program Director/Program Manager | Portfolios |
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Ramachandran Arudchandran Ph.D. | HEAL Biomarker Program |
Taryn Aubrecht Ph.D. | Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) |
Hibah O. Awwad Ph.D. | Portfolio: Basic and translational studies that relate to traumatic brain injury (TBI); cognitive/emotional domains affected by TBI; TBI-related dementia including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) |
Debra Babcock M.D., Ph.D. | Portfolio: Basic and translational aspects of behavior and cognitive neuroscience; CNS plasticity; Lewy Body Dementia; neuroimaging development (disease-agnostic) |
Julia Bachman Ph.D. | Portfolio: HEAL Initiative Early Translational Efforts; HEAL PRECISION Human Pain Network |
Linda Bambrick Ph.D. | Portfolio: Responses to spinal cord injury or peripheral nerve injury, including axonal regeneration; interventions to promote recovery and/or restore function |
Richard T. Benson M.D., Ph.D. | Portfolio: Global Health and Health Disparities |
Francesca Bosetti Ph.D., Pharm.D. | Portfolio: Large vessel occlusion (LVO), thrombectomy, hemorrhagic transformation, blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption after stroke |
Chris Boshoff Ph.D. | Cooperative Research to enable and Advance Translational Enterprises (CREATE), Preclinical Neurotherapeutic Biologics Development |
Jeremy Brown M.D. | SIREN (Strategies to Innovate EmeRgENcy Care Clinical Trials Network); clinical trials in neurologic, heart, lung, blood, and traumatic injuries |
Emily Caporello Ph.D. | Small Business Programs (SBIR/STTR); BRAIN Dissemination Research Resource Program |
Daofen Chen Ph.D. | Portfolio: Motor control and learning; device-based or behavioral interventions for movement disorders, stroke, and cerebral palsy; neural rehabilitation |
Ben Churn Ph.D. | Portfolio: Acquired epilepsies (with focus on circuit mechanisms, seizure initiation, seizure detection, seizure prediction); comorbidities and co-occurring conditions such as aging: cognitive impairments, ID, post-traumatic epilepsy, stroke-induced seizures, seizures in aging and development; Refractory Seizures and Status Epilepticus; basic research on synaptic transmission and plasticity |
Roderick Corriveau Ph.D. | Portfolio: Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) Program Lead; Point of Contact for Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia (VCID), for example Vascular Cognitive Impairment (VCI), Vascular Dementia (VaD), Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy (CAA), and CADASIL |
Devon Crawford Ph.D. | Education and other projects related to improving research quality |
Adi Cymerblit Sabba Ph.D. | Portfolio: NIH NeuroBioBank (human brain tissue banking) |
Charles Cywin Ph.D. | Portfolio: Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network (BPN) Program and HEAL Optimization of Non-addictive Therapies [Small Molecules and Biologics] to Treat Pain |
William P. Daley Ph.D. | Portfolio: HIV-associated neurological disorders, infectious diseases of the nervous system, neurovirology, and Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies HIV-associated neurological disorders, infectious diseases of the nervous system, neurovirology, and Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies Additional Keywords: Neuroinfectious diseases; viral (HIV, HSV, ZIKV, SARS-CoV-2), bacterial, parasitic, and fungal CNS infection; prion-related disorders; Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE); Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD); Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE); NeuroAIDS |
Karen David Ph.D. | Portfolio: BRAIN Integrated Approaches/Circuits Research Project Grants (R34, R01) and Exploratory Team-research BRAIN Circuit Program - eTeamBCP (U01); NINDS Collaborative Opportunities for Multidisciplinary, Bold, and Innovative Neuroscience (COMBINE RM1); team science; species diversity |
Argenia Doss Ph.D. | Portfolio: Trans-NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) |
Jane Fountain Ph.D. | Portfolio: Primary brain tumor (pediatric and young adult) |
Megan Frankowski Ph.D. | Translational Neural Devices, BRAIN Initiative, HEAL Initiative, Movement and Neuropsychiatric Disorders |
Hermon R. Gebrehiwet DrPH , CCRP | Portfolio: Research Opportunities in Humans; BRAIN Initiative |
Annette Gilchrist Ph.D. | Portfolio: Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) (833) |
James Gnadt Ph.D. | Portfolio: Systems and computational neuroscience; BRAIN Initiative (integrative systems neuroscience; team-research brain circuits programs) |
Thomas N. Greenwell PhD | Portfolio: Basic, preclinical, and clinical research in pain; peripheral and central mechanisms, pathways, circuits and processing of pain |
Brooks Gross Ph.D. | Translational Neural Devices, BRAIN Initiative, HEAL Initiative |
Amelie Gubitz Ph.D. | Portfolio: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS), Progressive Muscular Atrophy (PMA), ALS-Frontotemporal Degeneration (ALS-FTD) |
Adam Hartman M.D. | Pediatric Epilepsy; Clinical Epilepsy Research |
Janet He Ph.D. | Portfolio: CNS and homeostatic regulation of sleep and circadian rhythms; sleep in neurological disorders; neuroendocrine systems |
Sandra J Hewett BS, PhD | Portfolio: Blood-brain barrier (BBB) biology, cerebrovascular biology, and cerebrovascular disease unless ischemic stroke-related; global ischemia/cardiac arrest |
Rebecca Hommer M.D. | EPPIC-Net, HEAL Initiative, Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia (VCID), and Pediatric Research |
Nina Hsu Ph.D. | Portfolio: Neuroethics, Bioethics |
Eric Hudak Ph.D. | Translational Neural Devices; Neural prostheses, neural engineering, sensory prostheses, brain-computer interfaces (BCI), prosthetic-limb control, peripheral and spinal interfaces, electrochemistry, implantable materials |
Grace M. Hwang Ph.D. | Portfolio: BRAIN Initiative New Technologies (R01, RF1); BRAIN Initiative Optimization (U01) |
Scott Janis Ph.D. | Clinical trials and epidemiology, Cerebrovascular disease, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), NINDS Stroke Trials Network and the Neurological Emergencies Treatment Trials Network (NETT) |
David Jett Ph.D. | NIH Counterterrorism (CounterACT) program, neural exposome, neurotoxicology, translational research, and diversity in the research workforce |
Kari Johnson Ph.D. | Portfolio: BRAIN CONNECTS Program; BRAIN Initiative Advanced Postdoctoral Career Transition Award to Promote Diversity (K99/R00) |
Brian Klein Ph.D. | Epilepsy Therapy Screening Program (ETSP), Preclinical Pharmacology, Animal Models. Preclinical Neurotherapeutic Development |
James Koenig Ph.D. | Portfolio: Aneurysm/malformations, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), pediatric stroke/brain injury, intracranial pressure (when related to hemorrhagic stroke), microbleeds, cerebral palsy, congenital heart disease |
Svetlana Kotliarova Ph.D. | Portfolio: Primary brain tumor (adult) Additional Keywords: Immunotherapy and immunosuppression; brain tumor invasion, signaling, angiogenesis, and necrosis; glioma stem cell biology; glioblastoma |
Nicholas Langhals Ph.D. | Translational Neural Devices; Neural engineering with emphases in neuroprostheses, neuromodulation, brain-computer interface (BCI) devices, prosthetic control, and neural interface technology development |
Timothy LaVaute Ph.D. | Portfolio: Neurogenesis and progenitor cell biology in nervous system development and function, application/treatment; tissue engineering; human embryonic stem cells; human fetal tissue; dendritic growth and plasticity |
Miriam Leenders Ph.D. | Portfolio: Acquired epilepsies (with focus on epilepsies with immunological or infectious etiology); epilepsy prevention strategies, disease modifying interventions, and cell replacement therapies; comorbidities and co-occurring conditions: auto-immune, viral, psychiatric and hormonal; Lafora Disease; temporal lobe epilepsy; basic research on synaptic function; tripartite synapse Additional Keywords: Neurogenesis; neuroinflammation; Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE); synaptic transmission, function, and development; synaptogenesis; intracellular synaptic signaling; electrical synapse; synapse regulation by astrocyte/glia |
Marguerite Matthews Ph.D. | Portfolio: Research Supplements to Support Diversity and Re-entry/Re-integration in Biomedical Research, Diversity F31, Doctoral Readiness R25, ENDURE R25, Summer R25, R13 Appropriate Representation |
Amber McCartney Ph.D. | Portfolio: Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) |
Linda McGavern Ph.D. | Portfolio: Alzheimer's disease (AD), Limbic-predominant Age-related TDP-43 Encephalopathy (LATE), and Multiple Etiology Dementia (MED) |
Carolina Mendoza-Puccini M.D. | Strategies to Innovate Emergency Care Clinical Trials Network (SIREN), Common Data Elements (CDE), Data Sharing, Clinical Trials, Human Subjects |
Daniel Miller Ph.D. | Portfolio: Huntington's Disease; invertebrate NMJ development, structure, and function; NIH NeuroBioBank (human brain tissue banking) Additional Keywords: Human brain single cell omics |
D.P. Mohapatra Ph.D. | Portfolio: Translational mechanistic pain research; itch, peripheral somatosensation, and glia/neuroimmune biology (non-pain); HEAL Initiative Pain: chronic, acute, neuropathic, preclinical models, management; sensory neuron and ganglia; nociceptor, nociceptive, analgesia, analgesic, hyperalgesia; thermosensation |
Jill Morris Ph.D. | Portfolio: Technology development for gene-targeted therapies; various uncommon and rare diseases (including neural tube defects (spina bifida), hydrocephalus and normal pressure hydrocephalus, Tourette syndrome and tics, Neurofibromatosis 1 and 2, Schwannomatosis, Noonan Syndrome, inborn errors of metabolism, lysosomal storage disorders, leukodystrophies, brain iron accumulation disorders (NBIA), copper metabolism disorders, congenital disorders of glycosylation, mitochondrial disorders, and peroxisomal disorders); Ataxia Telangiectasia and basic studies on ATM mutation related DNA damage and DNA repair; neural crest and neural tube development |
Glen Nuckolls Ph.D. | Portfolio: Muscular dystrophies; spinal muscular atrophy and inherited peripheral neuropathies (e.g. Charcot-Marie-Tooth, giant axonal neuropathy, familial dysautonomia) and inflammatory or autoimmune peripheral neuropathies (e.g. myasthenia gravis, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy); diabetic- and chemotherapy induced-peripheral neuropathies |
Leslie C. Osborne Ph.D. | Portfolio: Sensory and multi-sensory systems, cortical and thalamic circuits, integrative function of brain circuits, sensorimotor integration, computational neuroscience, and Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS), Smart and Connected Health (SCH) |
Michael Oshinsky Ph.D. | Portfolio: Migraine and other headache disorders; trigeminal pain; HEAL Initiative |
Rebecca Price Ph.D. | Portfolio: NINDS Biorepository (BioSEND); NINDS Human Cell and Data Repository (NHCDR); NINDS Biospecimen Resource Access Committees (BRACs) |
Srikanth Ranganathan Ph.D. | Portfolio: Spinocerebellar Ataxias (SCAs), Friedreich’s Ataxia (FRDA/FA), Spinal and Bulbar Muscular Atrophy (SBMA), Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias (HSPs); Cell death mechanisms relevant to neurodegenerative disorders and not due to ischemia per se; Basic Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration including Mitochondrial / ER / Calcium homeostasis, RNA biology and protein turnover; Neuromuscular Junction Biology (vertebrate) |
Robert Riddle Ph.D. | Portfolio: Early pattern formation; cortical, cerebellar, midbrain, and hindbrain development; chromatin structure and function in the nervous system; epigenetic mechanisms; development and use of animal model systems; Joubert and Dandy-Walker Syndrome; Chiari Malformations; Down Syndrome and diseases related to intellectual developmental disorders; Fragile X Tremor Ataxia (FXTAS) |
Rebecca Roof Ph.D. | Innovation Grants to Nurture Initial Translational Efforts (IGNITE) |
Cheryse A. Sankar Ph.D. | Health Equity; Sociodeterminants of Health; Pain Disparities; NIH HEAL Initiative; Health Disparities in Neurological Disorders and Stroke |
Shireen A. Sarraf Ph.D. | Portfolio: Structural, biochemical, molecular, and cellular aspects of Parkinson's disease (PD) and Lewy body dementia (LBD) as it relates to alpha-synuclein structure, mitochondrial biology, and lysosomal function; role of environmental factors in the etiology of synucleinopathies; basic studies of protein quality control (mitochondrial and lysosomal dysfunction, protein aggregation, mitophagy, autophagy) in the pathogenesis of PD and LBD |
Frank Shewmaker Ph.D. | Portfolio: Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD), Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) |
Beth-Anne Sieber Ph.D. | Portfolio: Synucleinopathies, including Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Lewy body dementias; preclinical and clinical studies evaluating cellular and molecular neurodegeneration, genetic, and other risk factors Additional Keywords: Functional neurobiology of genetic risk factors; gut-brain axis; microbiome; neuroimmune; neuroinflammation; mood, cognitive dysfunction; LRRK2; synuclein transmission |
Shardell M. Spriggs Ph.D. | NIH Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats Program (CounterACT) |
Christine Swanson-Fischer Ph.D. | Portfolio: Parkinson’s Disease (PD), Lewy Body Dementias (LBD), and related synucleinopathies focusing on biomarker discovery and validation, omics-based approaches, clinical genetics, epidemiology, and natural history studies |
Elizabeth I. Sypek Ph.D. | Portfolio: HEAL Initiative; HEAL Training and Workforce programs; pain |
Edmund Talley Ph.D. | Portfolio: BRAIN Initiative Neurotechnology Development Program, BRAIN CONNECTS Program |
Carol Taylor-Burds Ph.D. | HEAL Initiative - Biomarkers Program and Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network |
Natalie Trzcinski Ph.D. | Portfolio: BRAIN Initiative Research Resource Grants for Technology Integration and Dissemination (U24) |
William Tyler Ph.D. | Portfolio: General glial biology; oligodendrocyte and Schwann cell development, function and myelination; basic astrocyte biology; neuronal polarity and migration; axon guidance |
Lauren Ullrich Ph.D. | Portfolio: Diversity Faculty K01, MOSAIC K99/R00, ADRD K99/R00, D-SPAN F99/K00, Advancing R25, SuRE (R16), Diversity R01, ReWARD R01 |
George Umanah Ph.D. | Portfolio: Molecular structure, function, and regulation of ion channels, transporters, and pumps; channelopathy; mitochondria and mTORopathy mediated epileptic spasms and structural epilepsies; identifying novel genes and biomarkers for the epilepsies |
Nsini Umoh Ph.D. | Portfolio: Translational and clinical studies that relate to traumatic brain injury (TBI); cognitive/emotional domains affected by TBI; TBI-related dementia including Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) |
Ursula Utz Ph.D., MBA | Portfolio: Multiple sclerosis and related disorders (including animal models thereof), studies on CNS demyelination and repair |
Vicky Whittemore Ph.D. | Portfolio: Genetic epilepsies; metabolic epilepsy; sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP); clinical epilepsy research; myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fatigue; alternating hemiplegia of children |
Guangying Wu Ph.D. | brain computer interfaces, sensory and motor prostheses, limb loss, neuro-interventional technologies, systems neuroscience |
Ran Zhang Ph.D. | Portfolio: NIH Genomic Data Sharing (GDS) policy; NIH Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP); NINDS Human Genetics DNA and Cell Line Repository Additional Keyword: Sequence analyses, whole genome sequencing, exome sequencing, and targeted genome sequencing |