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
Shyam Prabhakaran
James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Professor of Neurology
Chair of Neurology
Bakhtiar Yamini
Professor of Neurological Surgery
Director, Neurosurgical Oncology
Interim Chair, Department of Neurological Surgery
John Maunsell
Albert D. Lasker Distinguished Service Professor of Neurobiology
Director of the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience
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
- UChicago Medicine Neurosciences programs
- UChicago Medicine Department of Neurology
- UChicago Medicine Department of Neurological Surgery
- Institute for Translational Medicine
- Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence
- UChicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center
- Argonne National Laboratory
- Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior
- Institute for Molecular Engineering
- UChicago Department of Neurobiology
Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2023
Project Period: Maximum 12 months, to commence any time after January 1, 2024
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, 2023. Decisions about winning proposals will be made before January 1, 2024, and funding for up to 12 months may be requested to commence any time after that date.
Proposals will be evaluated based on:
- Innovation
- Scientific rigor
- The uniqueness of opportunity/infrastructure/milieu
- Contribution to multidisciplinary program development, specifying what disciplines it proposes to bridge
- Potential impact on clinical neuroscience translation or disease applications
- 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).
The 2024 Safadi Lecture
Wednesday, September 4th, 2024
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.
Past Safadi Lectures
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Ardem Patapoutian
2023"How Do You Feel?
The Molecules That Sense Touch" -
Beverly L. Davidson
2022"Emerging Gene Therapies for the Central Nervous System"
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Christopher A. Walsh
2021"One Brain, Many Genomes: Somatic Mutation and Genomic Diversity in The Human Brain, From Development to Degeneration"
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Costantino Iadecola
2020"Neurovascular Pathways to Cognitive Impairment: From Vascular Dementia to Alzheimer's Disease and Beyond"
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Walter Koroshetz
2019"Welcome to the Golden Age of Neuroscience"
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Mark L. Kahn
2018"The Microbiome and Cerebral Cavernous Malformations"
Safadi Pilot Grant Recipients
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Adil Javed, MD, PhD
2024“Augmentation of motor function in a disabled limb through transcranial magnetic stimulation of the underlying damaged corticospinal network in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS)”
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Willard W. Sharp MD, PhD
2024“Mechanisms of brain injury following near fatal opioid overdose”
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Joel Voss, PhD
2024“Noninvasive neuromodulation of human mesial-temporal epilepsy networks”
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Romuald Girard, PhD
2023"Spatial Transcriptome of Cells Constituting Cerebral Microbleeds"
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Paschalis Kratsios, MD
2023"Dipeptide Repeat (DPR) Aggregation and Lysosomal Impairment in C9ORF72 ALS/FTD"
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Sean Polster, MD
2023"The Influence of the Gut Microbiome on Cerebral Radiation Necrosis"
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Sean Foxley, PhD
2022"Using multi-modal, multi-scale imaging for the creation of an accurate 3D cellular atlas of the normal human spinal cord"
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Romuald Girard, PhD
2022“Circulating MicroRNAs as Plasma Biomarker of PIK3CA Somatic Mutations in Cerebral Developmental Venous Anomalies Predisposing to CA Development“
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William Green, PhD
2022"The Role of Golgi Satellites in Alzheimer’s Disease"
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Ying Li, MD, MA
2022“Spatial transcriptomic and proteomic of endothelial cells harboring PIK3CA mutation using GeoMx technology in cerebral cavernous angiomas”
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Piyali Saha, PhD
2022"The role of sex hormones and the gut microbiome in Alzheimer’s Disease pathology"
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Alfredo J. Garcia, PhD
2021"Neural Mechanisms of Respiratory Instability Due to Chronic Fentanyl Use"
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Romuald Girard, PhD
2021"Machine Learning Analyses of in-vivo Brain Permeability and Iron Deposition in the Human Brain with Hemorrhagic Angiopathy"
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Stephanie Hage, MD, MSc, MA
2021"Bayesian Adaptive Design in Phase IIA Biomarker Trial"
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Martin Herman, MD, PhD
2021"Implantation of Wireless Floating Multielectrode Arrays into Lumbar Spinal Cord for the Control of Locomotion in Yucatan Pigs"
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Xiaoxi Zhuang, PhD
2021"The Contribution of Mild Pyridoxine 5’-Phosphate Oxidase (PNPO) Deficiency to Epilepsy in Children"
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Siri Atma W. Greeley, MD, PhD
2020"Examining the neurodevelopmental role of KCNJ11 in patient-derived cerebral organoids"
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Bakhtiar Yamini, MD
2019"NF-κB and the Microbiome in Neurodegeneration"
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Hemraj B. Dodiya, PhD
2019"Role of Intestinal Hyperpermeability “leaky gut” in Alzheimer’s Disease Pathogenesis"
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Dongdong Zhang, MD
2019"The Antigen Recognition Study in Cerebral Cavernous Malformation Disease"
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Sean Polster, MD
2018"Differential Transcriptome of Human Cerebral Hemorrhagic Microangiopathy"
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Le Shen, PhD
2018"Effect of Cerebral Cavernous Malformation Genes on Intestinal Epithelium"
