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Rosamund Stone Zander Translational Neuroscience Center Selects Two Fellowship Awardees

Cultivating the next generation of translational scientists focused on childhood brain disorders is a key priority of the Rosamund Stone Zander Translational Neuroscience Center (RSZ TNC) at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). The RSZ TNC is therefore delighted to announce the selection of its newest cohort of postdoctoral fellows for 2023. These two outstanding candidates, Dr. Chen Ding and Dr. Sneham Tiwari, were chosen for their qualifications and ambitious research proposals. Each will have the opportunity to build translational research projects with the mentorship of leaders in their fields, and will leverage the full depth and breadth of resources at the RSZ TNC and BCH throughout their two-year fellowship program.

Chen Ding recently completed his PhD in Neuroscience at Yale University, where he studied axon regeneration and axon degeneration in the model organism C. elegans in the lab of Dr. Marc Hammarlund. During his PhD research, he became fascinated by the role of mitochondria in neurodegeneration. His fellowship project will focus on developing gene therapy approaches for autosomal dominant optic atrophy, a childhood disease caused by the important mitochondrial protein OPA1. His long-term career goal is to become an independent neuroscientist who accelerates the translation of basic research on neurodegenerative diseases to therapeutics. Dr. Ding will be mentored by Dr. Thomas Schwarz in the Department of Neurobiology and the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center.

Sneham Tiwari recently completed her PhD in Biomedical sciences at Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University. Her PhD focused on understanding aging-related neuropathologies and targeting them with efficient and bioavailable drug delivery systems. She is fascinated by understanding the neurological disorders and factors involved in the abnormal functioning of the brain and translation in patients’ symptoms. Currently, she is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she is pursuing her passion, studying epilepsy genetics with an emphasis on cellular mosaicism. Her fellowship project will be focused on studying somatic mutations occurring in genes of the mTOR pathway, targeting important genes that affect brain development. Her long-term career goal is to become an independent neuroscientist and focus on deciphering mechanisms underlying neurological disorders and translating towards high throughput drug screening and targeted efficient bioavailable therapeutics development to enhance patients’ quality of life. Dr. Tiwari will be mentored by Dr. Annapurna Poduri in the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center and Department of Neurology.

The RSZ TNC Fellowship program began in the fall of 2021 after an unprecedented $25 million gift from philanthropist Rosamund Stone Zander. These funds support the training of these and other promising scientists into positions within academia, clinical care and industry at the intersection of translational research for neurodevelopmental disorders. In this fellowship, Drs. Chen Ding and Sneham Tiwari will collaborate with a cohort of researchers including the Neurodevelopmental T32 Training Program, the Division of Developmental Medicine’s LEND Fellowship, and the Tommy Fuss Center’s Fellowship in Neuropsychiatric Disease.

For more information on this or any other RSZ TNC programs, please reach out to us directly at TNC@childrens.harvard.edu. Learn more about our fellowship programs at https://rsztnc.org/fellowships.