This seminar will be held in the Neurological Institute of New York's Auditorium (1st floor). Columbia University's Intercampus Shuttle Service is the best way to travel between campuses.

Viviana Gradinaru's research group at Caltech develops and employs optogenetics, tissue clearing and viral vectors to gain new insights on circuits underlying locomotion, reward and sleep. In their most recent work the group has delineated novel arousal-promoting dopaminergic circuits that might be at the root of sleep disturbances common to numerous neuropsychiatric disorders (Cho et al., Neuron, 2017). Present-day neuroscience relies on genetically-encoded tools; in both transgenic and non-transgenic animals, current practice for vector delivery is stereotaxic brain surgery — an invasive method that can cause hemorrhages and non-uniform expression over a limited volume. To address this limitation, they have developed viral-vector selection methods to identify engineered capsids capable of reaching target cell-populations across the body and brain after noninvasive systemic delivery (Deverman et al, Nature Biotechnology, 2016). They use whole-body tissue clearing to facilitate transduction maps of systemically delivered genes (Yang et al, Cell, 2014; Treweek et al, Nature Protocols, 2016). With novel AAV capsids, they achieved brain-wide transduction in adult mice after systemic delivery and sparse stochastic Golgi-like genetic labeling that enables morphology tracing for both central and peripheral neurons (Chan et al, Nature Neuroscience, 2017). Viral vectors that can efficiently and selectively deliver transgenes to target tissues after injection into the bloodstream allow them to genetically modify a high percentage of desired cells with more homogeneous coverage, without the need for either highly invasive direct injections or time-consuming transgenesis. Since CNS disorders are notoriously challenging due to the restrictive nature of the blood brain barrier, the recombinant vectors engineered to overcome this barrier can enable potential future use of exciting advances in gene editing via the CRISPR-Cas, RNA interference and gene replacement strategies to restore diseased CNS circuits.

Dr. Viviana Gradinaru completed her BS at Caltech and her PhD research at Stanford University and is now a Professor of Neuroscience and Biological Engineering at Caltech. Dr. Gradinaru’s research interests focus on developing tools and methods for neuroscience (optogenetic actuators and sensors; tissue clearing and imaging; gene delivery vehicles) and using them to characterize circuits underlying locomotion, reward, and sleep, with the goal to inform deep brain stimulation (DBS) and better understand the underlying mechanisms of action. Prof. Gradinaru has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator and Pioneer Awards and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and has been honored as a World Economic Forum Young Scientist and as one of Cell’s 40 under 40. Gradinaru is also a Sloan Fellow, Pew Scholar, Moore Inventor, Vallee Scholar, and Allen Brain Institute NGL Council Member, and received the inaugural Peter Gruss Young Investigator Award by the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. In 2017 she was the Early-Career Scientist Winner in the Innovators in Science Award in Neuroscience (Takeda and the New York Academy of Sciences) and in 2018 she received a Gill Transformative award. Viviana Gradinaru has also been very active in teaching and service, participating with lab members in regular technology training workshops at Caltech and for summer courses at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as well as running the CLOVER Center (Beckman Institute for CLARITY, Optogenetics and Vector Engineering), which provides training and access to the group's reagents and methods for the broader research community.

Those who wish to meet the speaker during their visit should contact Eleonora Spinazzi (McKhann lab). For general inquiries please contact [email protected].

The Columbia Neuroscience Seminar series is a collaborative effort of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, the Department of Neuroscience, the Doctoral Program in Neurobiology and Behavior and the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, and with support from the Kavli Institute for Brain Science.