I am a physician scientist with clinical specialization in genetic movement disorders such as Huntington's disease, spinocerebellar ataxias and other genetic ataxias, hereditary spastic paraplegias and genetic parkinsonism and dystonia. My research is focused on understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying genetic influences of Parkinson's disease and neurodegeneration, using Drosophila and human iPSC-derived neuronal and glial cell culture models. During movement disorder fellowship, I was involved in genetic analysis of a longitudinal cohort of over 800 PD patients with detailed motor and cognitive evaluations which led to the discovery that GBA variants are associated with faster progression of motor and cognitive decline. My lab is focused on trying to understand the cellular mechanisms underlying this clinical observation. We hypothesize that GBA variants lead to acceleration of the spread of Lewy pathology from cell to cell, and are currently testing this in our fly and cell culture models.I am also a site PI for longitudinal natural history studies in genetic ataxias (CRC-SCA sponsored by the National Ataxia Foundation) and hereditary spastic paraplegias (SP-CERN sponsored by the National Spastic Paraplegia Foundation).