Brief Summary of research: 

The lab studies the basic processes that control the development of the human and mammalian brain and how genetic mutations may affect these processes to lead to neurodevelopmental disorders

Specific research topics related to Nanoscience and Nanotechnology:

Therapies for neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and early onset epilepsy have been difficult to develop due to a lack of access to human brain tissues. Stem-cell based In vitro organoids offer hope in this area, but they have limited spatial organization and cannot systematically reproduce the generation of histologically complex brain regions. By contrast, microfluidic devices allow us to generate histologically contingent, whole 3D brain organoids that developmentally and histologically mimic the formation of the human frontal neural tube. These systems hold promise for identifying specific pathophysiological pathways of brain disorders and for understanding the development of the human brain as a whole.