Georgia Panagiotakos

After undergraduate training in molecular biology at MIT, Panagiotakos worked in the laboratories of Lorenz Studer and Viviane Tabar at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she performed in vivo and behavioral studies investigating the specification and transplantation of pluripotent stem cell derivatives into the normal and diseased brain. This research, aimed at developing cell-replacement therapies for neurodegenerative disorders, formed the basis for a long-standing fascination with the mechanisms by which cells decide their fate. Panagiotakos completed doctoral studies at Stanford University in the laboratories of Theo Palmer and Ricardo Dolmetsch, exploring the role of calcium signals, through a channel implicated in neuropsychiatric disease, on the differentiation of specific neuronal subtypes in the developing mouse cortex and in human stem cell-derived neurons. Since arriving at UCSF in 2014, she has assembled a research team that is integrating a variety of complementary approaches to investigate the role of electrical activity, calcium signaling and ion channel diversity in sculpting forebrain development and evolution, with an eye towards elucidating how these mechanisms are altered to give rise to neurodevelopmental disorders and to drive neurodegenerative processes.