People

Dr. Marie Cornet is a Neonatologist at Benioff Children Hospital, University of California, San Francisco. She cares for premature babies and term neonates who require intensive care at birth. She is part of the Neuro-intensive Care Nursery (NICN) leadership team. Her research focuses on neonatal neurology, term encephalopathy, and neonatal seizures.

I am a neuroscientist, a vascular biologist, and a physician in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine. My lab, the Neurovascular Development lab at crouchlab.ucsf.edu, studies how brain blood vessels grow and interact with other brain cells. In part, this interest is inspired from the preterm babies that I care for clinically. Approximately 20% of preterm babies born between 24-28 gestation weeks will develop germinal matrix hemorrhage (GMH). This hemorrhage can cause hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, and death, and unfortunately there are currently no treatments.

Donna Ferriero, MD MS is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at UCSF. She is also a member of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences. Dr. Ferriero is Director of the Neonatal Brain Disorder Laboratories and former co-director of the Newborn Brain Research Institute at UCSF. Her laboratory has been critical in defining the relationship of selectively vulnerable populations of neural cells during maturation-dependent injury.

Dr. Hannah Glass is a pediatric neurologist, founding co-director of the Neurointensive Care Nursery (NICN), and Director of Neonatal Critical Care Services at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. She is also the program director of the Neonatal Neurology Fellowship Program.

Dr. Glass specializes in brain focused care for children with neurological conditions diagnosed in the newborn period, including hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, stroke and seizures, as well as brain injury following preterm birth. She sees children during the neonatal period, and through childhood.

My research is focused on determining how the full-term brain responds to acute injury during the neonatal period, and strategies to enhance neuroplasticity and long-term functional outcomes. My specific research goals are to: (1) clearly define the neuronal subpopulations that are vulnerable to ischemia and critical for neurodevelopment, (2) determine the mechanisms of injury and endogenous repair in the immature brain, and (3) define therapeutic strategies to enhance long-term function.

The Halkias lab studies the cellular and molecular signals that drive human immune development with a focus on understanding how early life host-microbe interactions influence adaptive immune responses to perinatal inflammatory disorders such as preterm birth. Early life is a critical time in immune development marked by rapid exposure to environmental antigens. Microbial colonization of mucosal tissues plays a key role in the development and education of the host immune system and influences the susceptibility to immune-mediated disease later in life.

Dr. Judge is a physician-scientist with extensive experience with mouse and human models of genetic disease. His current research utilizes induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and gene editing to model disease and develop therapies. His primary interests focus on therapeutic gene editing for dominant neurologic disorders. He is funded by the NIH and Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association to evaluate therapeutic gene editing strategies in human and murine models of genetic neuropathy and published the first study of a gene editing approach for axonal neuropathy (Feliciano et al, 2021). Dr.