Anastasia Levchenko

Biography

 I am a young scientist who specializes in Neurogenetics/Psychiatric Genetics. During my career, I have worked on the genetics of frontotemporal dementia, restless legs syndrome (RLS) and schizophrenia. Among other achievements, my work has led to the discovery of two novel genetic loci for RLS (20p13 and 16p12.1) and of a novel singleton mutation, associated with schizophrenia, that damages β-catenin in silico (p.N648S). My overall experience in Neurogenetics/Psychiatric Genetics spans fourteen years. I have six-year postdoctoral training experience and four-year university level teaching experience with the rank of Assistant Professor. Importantly, I have considerable experience in writing successful grant applications as the principal investigator. Furthermore, I won an important number of awards and scholarships during my career. I am also the first author on multiple peer-reviewed journal articles. I have experience with staff supervision and budget oversight, especially during my postdoctoral training, when I created a new laboratory. I obtained four operating/equipment grants, necessary to run this laboratory. My duties also included training/supervising a postdoctoral fellow, an MSc student and three technicians. During my PhD project I also trained/supervised an MSc student and a technician. At the current stage of my career, my primary scientific interest is in Psychiatric Genetics. I would like to devote the following years of my career to the study of genetic factors and molecular pathways, implicated in the pathogenesis of mental illnesses, especially schizophrenia. In particular, I have strong interest in next-generation sequencing, such as exome and other targeted sequencing experiments, applied to psychiatric disorders. The results of this study, together with other existing scientific data, will pave the way for creation of new - safe and efficacious - treatments for these devastating disorders.

Research Interest

 Psychiatry