UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, San Francisco

Dr. Elliott H. Sherr is dedicated to the care of children with neurological disorders and to finding the causes and treatments for these diseases. He directs the Comprehensive Clinic for Brain Development, which diagnoses and treats children with MRI-visible disorders of brain development. These patients frequently have epilepsy, developmental delay and autism. Sherr also is co-director of the UCSF Neurometabolic Program and Clinic, which diagnoses and treats children with neurological diseases caused by abnormal metabolism, such as phenylketonuria (PKU).
Dr Sherr graduated from Stanford University with undergraduate degrees in philosophy and biology. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a medical degree at Columbia University. He completed pediatrics, neurology and child neurology residency training at UCSF. He directs a research group, the Brain Development Research Program, that studies the genetics and biology of autism and epilepsy, work funded by the National Institutes of Health and March of Dimes.

Dr Lynn Paul
Head, Corpus Callosum Research Program
California Institute of Technology, America

Lynn K. Paul, PhD is a Senior Research Scientist at California Institute of Technology, where she is directing a research program studying brain-structure, cognition and social processing in Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (AgCC). Dr Paul received a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology from the Department of Neurology, UCLA.

In graduate school, Dr Paul began working with Dr Warren Brown  to describe the cognitive and behavioural profile of individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum. Currently, she is an Associate Research Professor at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, where she continues to collaborate with Dr Brown on research describing the AgCC profile.

In 2002, Dr Paul collaborated with other professionals and family members to found the National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum (NODCC). The NODCC is a 501c3 not-for-profit that brings families, clinicians, and scientists together in the effort to improve quality of life for people with callosal disorders. During her tenure as NODCC president, she co-authored ACC and Me a children’s book about a boy with callosal agenesis.

Dr Paul is also more broadly interested in understanding the role cortical connectivity plays in development of higher-order social cognition. In addition to research on AgCC, she collaborates with Dr Ralph Adolphs on studies of social processing and brain structure in high functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders and individuals with congenital bilateral amygdala lesions. She is also the Director of the Psychological Assessment  for Research Laboratory at Caltech and principle investigator for the Psychological Assessment Core of the NIH-funded Conte Center for Social Decision Making.

Finally, Dr Paul maintains a clinical psychology practice (L.K.Paul and Associates) in Pasadena, where she sees adult outpatient psychotherapy clients and conducts neuropsychological assessments on individuals with callosal agenesis.

Fernanda Tovar Moll Ph.D., M.D.
Adjunct Professor, Institute of Biomedical Sciences | Scientific Director, D’Or Institute for Research an Education (IDOR), Brazil

Fernanda Tovar-Moll earned her MD degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. She completed a Medical Residency program in Radiology, with an emphasis in Neuroradiology, and obtained a PhD in Morphological Sciences at UFRJ. Her PhD thesis explored the use of MR tractography in assessing neuroplasticity in children with callosal dysgenesis. She was a postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institutes of Health (USA), from 2004-2007, where she investigated MRI anatomical biomarkers in demyelinating and neurodegenerative central nervous system disorders.

Dr Tovar-Moll is currently an adjunct professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences and the director of the Bioimaging Unit for Small Animals (CENABIO) at UFRJ. In addition, she also holds a position as the scientific director of the D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), a private not-for-profit research institute, which she co-founded in 2009. She has been working in projects related to basic, clinical and translational research in neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental conditions. Her main research interest is to employ novel in vivo imaging techniques in human and rodents to map brain circuits in order to improve the understanding of pathophysiological mechanisms related to functional and structural brain connectivity and brain plasticity in normal and pathological conditions. Another focus of interest is to employ neuromodulatory techniques, such as tDCS, TMS and MRI neurofeedback to induce changes in brain circuits to improve neurological function in stroke and other abnormal conditions.

Professor Roberto Lent
Professor of Neuroscience at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Roberto Lent is Professor of Neuroscience at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He also earned his MD and PhD at this University. Professor Lent has worked at the Institute of Biophysics for almost 20 years, moving to the Institute of Biomedical Sciences in 1994, where he runs the Laboratory of Neuroplasticity. He is currently the Director of the Institute.

He has conducted studies on neuroplasticity, neurodevelopment and evolution of the nervous system, employing different techniques, from cell biology to neuroimaging. His studies have recently revisited some widely held dogmas of quantitative neuroscience, including that which wrongly attributes the round numbers of one hundred billion neurons to the human brain, with ten-fold more glial cells. More recently in neuroplasticity, he has contributed to unravelling the Sperry paradox on acallosal subjects, revealing extensive white matter rewiring in the human brain during development.

Besides his scientific publications in specialised journals, Lent dedicates part of his time to the popularisation of Neuroscience, with books for adults and for children. For this activity he has been awarded the Brazilian National Prize on Popularization of Science in 2010, and the Prize for Public Understanding and Popularization of Science by the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World (TWAS) in 2007.

Professor Linda Richards

Professor Linda J. Richards did her undergraduate degree at Monash University and obtained her BSc (Hons) and a PhD from The University of Melbourne and The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in the laboratory of Prof. Perry Bartlett. Her thesis was on the determination of neuronal lineage in the developing spinal cord. She then moved to the USA to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies where she worked with Professor Dennis O’Leary on cortical development and formation of the lateral cortical projection through the internal capsule. She began her independent laboratory at The University of Maryland Medical School in 1997, in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology chaired by Professor Michael Shipley. In 2005 she moved her laboratory to The University of Queensland and was appointed as an Associate Professor in the Queensland Brain Institute and The School of Biomedical Sciences and in 2006, she was appointed as an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. In 2010, she was promoted to Professor at The University of Queensland and promoted to NHMRC Principal Research Fellow in 2011. In addition to running her laboratory, Professor Richards is passionate about informing the public about science. In 2006 she founded the Australian Brain Bee Challenge, a program that inspires and excites high school students about science. She is the scientific advisor for the patient support group AusDoCC – “Australian Disorders of the Corpus Callosum”.