Biography: Dr. Guo is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his undergraduate at the University of Michigan and medical school at the University of Florida. He completed his PhD at Harvard/Broad Institute with Dr. Joel Hirschhorn, MD, PhD, where he studied the genetic basis of human anthropometric traits and diseases. He subsequently completed neurology residency followed by training in cognitive neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. He performed post-doctoral research at Penn studying the role of short tandem repeats in Alzheimer's disease.

Hobbies: Cooking, trying new restaurants, Michigan athletics (Go Blue!)

Biography: Shiva graduated from Saint Cloud State University with a Bachelor’s in Biochemistry and continued his education at University of Delaware, completing his Master’s degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics. After finishing his Bachelor’s, he worked as a Research Technician at Johns Hopkins University in Dr. Arun Venkatesan’s Lab, where he worked on CNS axon degradation in the setting of neuroinflammatory disease and viral infection. He completed his Master’s thesis in Dr. Soonmoon Yoo’s Lab at Nemours Children’s Hospital. His research focused on Spatial Regulation of Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF) Expression in Sensory Neurons by miR-206. Following his master’s, he joined Gene Therapy Program at University of Pennsylvania as a Research Specialist and worked on research and development of new AAV capsids for tissue specific transduction.

Hobbies: Hiking, running, watching sports, gaming

Biography: Sommer graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2022 where she studied Neuroscience and Chemistry while working in the Colodner lab, researching the tracheal system within drosophila melanogaster. After graduation, she joined the Sadri-Vakili lab at Mass General focused on identifying molecular mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington’s Disease (HD), and X-linked dystonia parkinsonism (XDP), to discover novel potential therapeutic targets and biomarkers.

Hobbies: Reading, running, trying new restaurants around Philly

Biography: Zane recently graduated from Drexel with a Master's in Computer Science and previously studied Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. At Pitt, he worked in a research lab where he primarily worked on analyzing calcium imaging data and training deep learning models to track and label mouse behavior for open field experiments with Parkinsonian mouse models. He also interned at Spark Therapeutics where he built web applications for RNA-seq data analysis and visualization.

Hobbies: Playing basketball, board/video games, cooking

Biography: Amy graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2024  where she studied Neurobiology and Bioengineering. Throughout her undergraduate years, she worked in the UC Berkeley DNA sequencing facility and the Fisher Lab, focused on spatial navigation in drosophila melanogaster. She also interned at Caribou Biosciences as a stem cell therapeutics intern, working with CRISPR-engineered cell lines to target cancer cells. 

Hobbies: Running, snowboarding, hiking, origami