The 2024 Safadi Lecture

Research

Safadi Program

Safadi Program of Excellence in Clinical and Translational Neuroscience

Whether in clinical care or medical research, it is critical for physicians and scientists to partner in order to make important advances. This is particularly true in the neurosciences, where the brain presents an immense frontier for scientific advances utilizing collaborative tools and integrative strategies. The Safadi Program of Excellence in Clinical and Translational Neuroscience at the University of Chicago Medicine was launched on April 18, 2017, with the aim of facilitating this multidisciplinary interface, and creating opportunities for collaboration among scientists and clinicians engaged in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders. (Learn more about Mr. Mohammad Safadi.)

Issam Awad
Safadi Program Director
John Harper Seeley Professor of Neurological Surgery, Neurology & The Comprehensive Cancer Center
Director, Neurovascular Surgery

Seth Himelhoch
Professor and Chairman
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience

John Maunsell 
Albert D. Lasker Distinguished Service Professor of Neurobiology
Director of the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience

Shyam Prabhakaran
James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Professor of Neurology
Chair of Neurology

Mark Siegler
Executive Director, Bucksbaum Institute of Clinical Excellence
Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Surgery
Director, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics

Julian Solway
Director, Institute for Translational Medicine
Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics
Dean for Translational Medicine, Biological Sciences Division
Vice Chair for Research, Department of Medicine
Chair, Committee on Molecular Medicine
Professor of Pediatrics

Bakhtiar Yamini 
Professor of Neurological Surgery
Director, Neurosurgical Oncology
Interim Chair, Department of Neurological Surgery

Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2024
Project Period: Maximum 12 months, to commence any time after January 1, 2025

Full time faculty in any track at the University of Chicago are invited to apply for Safadi Pilot Grants, to support the generation of preliminary or exploratory data involving novel multidisciplinary neuroscience collaborations, or to help support fellowship training involving novel multidisciplinary tools and concepts.

Proposals should articulate the novel multidisciplinary collaboration, and disease relevance or collaboration with clinical neuroscience group. Applications are due at midnight, December 1, 2024. Decisions about winning proposals will be made before January 1, 2025, and funding for up to 12 months may be requested to commence any time after that date.

Proposals will be evaluated based on: 

  1. Innovation
  2. Scientific rigor
  3. The uniqueness of opportunity/infrastructure/milieu
  4. Contribution to multidisciplinary program development, specifying what disciplines it proposes to bridge
  5. Potential impact on clinical neuroscience translation or disease applications
  6. Future directions (i.e. how pilot data will be used for future project application; or how would fellowship support will be leveraged in future career development in multidisciplinary perspective).

2025 Safadi Pilot Grant Application Online Form

Dr. Karl Deisseroth

The 2024 Safadi Lecture

David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago
Wednesday, September 4th, 2024
 
Watch the Lecture Here

"Light-Gated Membrane Channels:
Discovery and Creation of Diversity, Principles from Structure, and Cellular Access to Biology"

Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD
D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Professor Karl Deisseroth received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, his PhD from Stanford, and his MD from Stanford. He also completed postdoctoral training, medical internship, and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He continues as a practicing psychiatrist at Stanford with specialization in major depression and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation. His laboratory has developed optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry, and other tools for single-cell control and investigation of intact biological systems, and is known for discovering the high-resolution structural principles of light-gated ion conduction.

 

 

 

Safadi Faculty Scholars

The Safadi Program is proud to have contributed to the recruitment and start-up support of key faculty in the Departments of Neurology and Neurological Surgery, who will lead transformational neuroscience programs relevant to human diseases.

Past Safadi Lectures

Safadi Pilot Grant Recipients