Macklis

Biography

He attended M.I.T. (S.B. Bioelectrical Engineering; S.B. Literature), Harvard Medical School (Harvard-M.I.T. HST Program), and graduate school at M.I.T. within the Harvard-M.I.T. Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), a graduate student with Richard L. Sidman at HMS. He was a postdoctoral fellow in developmental neuroscience with Richard Sidman. He trained clinically in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and adult neurology in the Harvard-Longwood Neurological Training Program, though he is no longer clinically active. Until moving his laboratory to MGH in 2001/2 to direct the thematic MGH-HMS Center for Nervous System Repair, he was in the basic science Division of Neuroscience at Children’s Hospital, HMS, and was Co-Director of the Parkinson’s Disease and Related Disorders Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / HMS. He assumed his current position at Harvard University in Cambridge in 2007, and moved physically in 2011.

Research Interest

focuses on neocortical projection neuron development and sub-type specification; neural progenitor / “stem cell” biology; induction of adult neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons); subtype-specific axonal growth cone biology; and directed neuronal subtype differentiation via molecular manipulation of neural progenitors and pluripotent cells (ES/iPS). The same biology informs understanding of neuronal subtype specificity of vulnerability of human neurodegenerative and developmental diseases, in particular ALS / motor neuron disease, HSPs, PLS, Huntington's disease, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and Rett syndrome and ACC in particular of ASDs.