biography

Kristen Brennand, PhD is a new faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. She was formerly the Director of the Alper Neural Stem Cell Center and an Associate Professor in the Pamela Sklar Division of Psychiatric Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She completed PhD studies at Harvard University with Dr. Douglas Melton, and post-doctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies with Dr. Fred Gage, before establishing her own laboratory at Mount Sinai in 2012 and moving to Yale in 2021. Her research integrates stem cell-based approaches with CRISPR-mediated genomic engineering strategies, in order to study the impact of patient-specific variants across and between the cell types of the brain. The goal of her research is to uncover the convergence and synergy arising from the complex interplay of the many risk variants linked to brain disease. Dr. Brennand’s work is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the Brain Research Foundation, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

professional activities

1.    funding agencies: Standing member of Bioengineering of Neuroscience, Vision and Low Vision Technologies [BNVT] (2019-2022).  Ad hoc reviewer for NIMH, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, NSERC, Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wellcome Trust, European Commission, Eagles Autism Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, New York Stem Cell Foundation, and more.

2.    editorial board: Review Editorial Board of Cell Stem Cell, Molecular Autism, Complex Psychiatry, npj Schizophrenia, PLoS One, StemJournal, Frontiers in Stem Cell Research, Neuroscience Next

3.    reviewer: Science, Nature, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Methods, Molecular Psychiatry, Nature Communications, Cell Stem Cell, Neuron, Cell Reports, Stem Cell Reports, Stem Cells, eLIFE, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Science Translational Medicine and more.