Seminar – Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD – “Development of Human Microphysiological Systems for Modeling Disease Complexity and Testing Interventional Strategies for Alzheimer’s Disease”
Tracy Young Pearse, PhD
Harvard University
Profile
About the Speaker: Tracy Young-Pearse is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, the Dennis J. Selkoe Distinguished Chair in Neurology, and the co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute’s Nervous System Diseases program. She received her undergraduate degree in her hometown of Saratoga Springs, NY from Skidmore College and completed her PhD in Genetics through the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program at Harvard Medical School. She established her independent laboratory in 2010 at the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases.
She is a longstanding member of the FNIH-funded Accelerating Medicines Partnership for Alzheimer’s Disease (AMP-AD) since its inception in 2014 and is an Alzheimer’s Association Zenith Fellow. Her laboratory currently leads a multi-site NIH U54-funded initiative focused on accelerating the use of microphysiological systems to advance precision medicine approaches for Alzheimer’s disease treatment and prevention.
The Young-Pearse lab seeks to define the mechanistic basis of neurodegenerative and developmental disorders of the nervous system, with an emphasis on how genetic risk and resilience factors shape molecular pathways in the brain. In recognition of her commitment to mentorship and training, she received the 2024 Faculty Mentoring Award from the Harvard BBS graduate program and the A. Clifford Barger Award for Excellence in Mentoring from Harvard Medical School in 2025.
For Further Information, Contact: Clark Kellogg at kellogg@waisman.wisc.edu
The seminar series is funded by the John D. Wiley Conference Center Fund, the Friends of the Waisman Center and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant P50HD105353.