Dr. Brodkin is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Founder and Director of the Adult Autism Spectrum Program, and Co-Director of the Autism Spectrum Program of Excellence (ASPE) (https://aspe.med.upenn.edu/) at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. The ASPE Program has a focus on NRXN1 research. Dr. Brodkin has more than 20 years of experience in clinical work and clinical research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as in fundamental research on the genomics and neurobiology of social behavior development. Dr. Brodkin has expertise in human phenotypes of ASD, quantitative phenotypes for genomic studies, translational biology, and clinical trials.

Ms. Finucane is a professor and genetic counselor at Geisinger’s Autism & Developmental Medicine Institute in Lewisburg, PA. She has a particular interest in genetic conditions that result in complex intellectual, behavioral, and neurological symptoms, including fragile X, dup15q, Smith-Magenis, 22q11.2 deletion, and other well-known syndromes. A current area of inquiry is the impact of family genetic background on variability of symptom expression in individuals with rare genetic disorders. Ms. Finucane’s publications include a wide range of topics related to genetic testing and counseling for developmental brain disorders. She has served in leadership roles in professional and patient advocacy organizations throughout her career, including a term as president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors and a co-founder of PRISMS and the Dup15q Alliance.

Dr. Foss-Feig is a clinical psychologist and member of the SFARI science team at the Simons Foundation, working closely with SFARI's clinical cohorts and the early career program. She previously ran a research lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where her work spanned understanding brain-behavior relations in autism, probing clinical and mechanistic convergence between autism and schizophrenia, and conducting biomarker discovery in the context of natural history and clinical trials in rare genetic disorders associated with autism.

Dr. Fuccillo is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. His lab studies neural circuits and synaptic adhesion molecules that are relevant for brain disease using mice as a model system. Dr. Fuccillo completed postdoctoral studies with Rob Malenka and Tom Südhof, studying the synaptic and behavioral functions of synapse-associated molecules such as Neurexin1. The Fuccillo lab uses in vitro and in vivo cellular electrophysiology, imaging and perturbation of neural activity, and quantitative behaviors to examine how dysfunction of neural signals within specific circuits impacts motor control and reinforcement learning. Dr. Fuccillo is particularly interested in how autism-associated genetic disruptions alter synapse function and behavior.

Dr. Gallagher is the Chief of the Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative at the Hospital for SickKids, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Professor at the Dept of Psychiatry University of Toronto and the Patsy Jamie Anderson Chair of Child and Youth Mental Health. Her research focus is in the areas of genomics and neuroscience with a focus on neurodevelopmental disorders. Her research is focused on the application of genomics and neuroscience to personalised medicine approaches to therapeutics for neurodevelopmental conditions.  She has a particular interest in outcomes related to rare neuropsychiatric variants, synaptopathies such as NRXN1 deletion and syndromal obesity. 

Dr. Pak is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph.D. from Emory University School of Medicine, where she studied how RNA processing affects normal neural function in humans and Drosophila. She completed postdoctoral studies at Stanford University School of Medicine, where she worked with Dr. Thomas Südhof to study the molecular basis of synaptic function and dysfunction using human induced neuronal models of schizophrenia. Dr. Pak’s research centers on the molecular and cellular basis of brain development and function from early embryonic stages through adulthood, with a particular focus on how disruptions in these pathways contribute to neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. To better understand how synaptic dysfunction predisposes individuals to these conditions, Dr. Pak’s lab uses unique cellular tools derived from human iPSCs, including human induced neuronal cells and 3D brain organoids.