The Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health is a story of innovative ideas, big questions, and persistence. Our researchers and clinicians are leaders in their fields, and from here they are taking on some of society's most urgent health priorities.
Diseases, disorders, and injuries of the brain have a profound influence on our communities; the direct and indirect costs of neurological and mood disorders to the Canadian economy total more than $61 billion per year and place enormous strain on affected individuals and their families. Understanding how a healthy brain works is essential to preventing and treating brain diseases, and both are essential to the health and well-being of British Columbians.
Campus
Vancouver
Affiliated UBC Faculty & Postdocs
| Name | Role | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Matsubara, Joanne Aiko | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Sensory systems, visual; Cellular interactions (including adhesion, matrix and cell wall); Gene and molecular therapy; Cellular neuroscience; neuroscience; vision; cell and development; cell death pathways; innate immune response; eye disease, retinal degenerations; Alzheimer's disease; neurodegeneration |
| Matthews, Benjamin | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Genomics; Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Zoology; Aedes aeygpti mosquitoes; Arboviral pathogens; Chikungunya; Comparative Physiology; Dengue fever; Genome of mosquitoes; Yellow fever; Zika |
| McKeown, Martin | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurology; novel treatments for Parkinson's; Video Monitoring Parkinson's; Brain Stimulation; Biomedical Engineering; Machine Learning; fMRI; EEG |
| Meneilly, Graydon | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | diabetes and carbohydrate metabolism in the elderly |
| Michalak, Erin | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | bipolar disorder; quality of life; stigma, community based research; depression; mental health; ehealth; self-management, Bipolar disorder, quality of life, stigma, community based research, depression, mental health, ehealth, self-management |
| Mizumoto, Kota | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Cell and Developmental Biology |
| Molday, Robert | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Proteins, cell structure, lipids, drug discovery, gene therapy |
| Motamed Yeganeh, Negin | Postdoctoral Fellow | Cognitive sciences; Neuropsychology; Neuropsychological Assessment; Cognitive development; Executive Functioning; Psycholinguistics |
| Moukhles, Hakima | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Muscle cells |
| Murphy, Timothy | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Autism; brain imaging; depression; Neuronal Systems; stroke |
| Nygaard, Haakon | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | potential role for anti-convulsant drugs in treating Alzheimers disease, which have shown promise in preclinical models of the disease |
| O'Connor, Timothy | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Identification of small molecules that stimulate neurite outgrowth and regeneration Examination of the role of semaphorins during embryonic development |
| Oberlander, Timothy | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Population epidemiological studies that characterize neurodevelopmental pathways that reflect risk, resiliency and developmental plasticity |
| Oruc, Ipek | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | visual recognition of high level forms such as faces, letters and objects |
| Pai, Dinesh | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Robotics, computer graphics, medical imaging, neuroscience, sensorimotor computation |
| Panenka, William | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Brain, Behaviour & Development |
| Pavlidis, Paul | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Engineering and technology; genomics; Bioinformatics; cellular and molecular neuroscience; Genetics; disorders of the nervous system; single-cell genomics; Computational Biology; Gene regulation |
| Pelech, Steven | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurological disorders (except neuromuscular diseases); Mechanisms of carcinogenesis; Adaptive immunity; Medical virology; Protein Microarrays; Protein Kinases; Protein Phosphatases; Protein phosphorylation; Cell signalling; Signal transduction; Cell division; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Neurological Disease; Cancer; Immunology |
| Phillips, Anthony | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Addictions Psychiatry, Basic Neurosciences |
| Quandt, Jacqueline | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neuroinflammation in damage and repair relevant to multiple sclerosis and other nervous system disorders |
| Ranger, Manon | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurodevelopment; Clinical nursing, secondary (acute care); neurodevelopment; Early-adversity; Biomarkers of early stress exposure; Brain development; pain; Prematurity |
| Rankin, Catharine | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Effects of experience early in development on adult behaviour and the nervous system, adult learning and memory |
| Rauscher, Alexander | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Physical sciences; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; magnetic resonance imaging; physics; quantitative susceptibility mapping; myelin water imaging; brain; maschine learning |
| Raymond, Lynn | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Huntington's Disease |
| Redekop, Gary | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Clinical trials in stroke and cerebrovascular disease, neurosurgery |
| Robillard, Julie | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Medical, health and life sciences; Patient experience/patient engagement; eHealth; Assistive technology; Neuroethics; Brain health technology; Artificial Intelligence; Dementia; mental health; Social robots; pediatrics |
| Rossi, Fabio | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Stem Cell Regenerative Medicine blood, Stem cells, regeneration, gene therapy, control of cell fate |
| Seamans, Jeremy | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder and addiction |
| Sena, Walter | Postdoctoral Fellow | Medical biotechnology diagnostics (including biosensors); Cognitive Neuropsychiatry |
| Simpson, Elizabeth | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Bioinformatics; Genetic medicine; Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Aniridia; CRISPR; Congenital Anomalies; Congenital blindness; Eye and Visual System Diseases; Gene therapy for brain and eye diseases; In vivo gene augmentation and genome editing (CRISPR/CAS9); MiniPromoters for restricted expression; Rare diseases |
| Snutch, Terrance Preston | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Medical, health and life sciences; Brain Disorders; Animal models; genomics; Drug discovery & development |
| Snyder, Jason | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | plasticity, learning, memory, stress, mental health, emotional behaviour |
| Soja, Peter | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | how synaptic transmission through identified ascending spinal sensory pathways and motoneuron pools differs during distinct behavioral states such as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM sleep, or general anesthesia vs. wakefulness |
| Soma, Kiran | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Zoology; Behavior; Biological Behavior; Endocrinology; Neuroendocrine Diseases; Neuronal Communication and Neurotransmission; Neuronal Systems; neuroscience; stress |
| Song, Weihong | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Medical, health and life sciences; Alzheimer's disease; Down Syndrome; mental health |
| Sossi, Vesna | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Medical Imaging, Brain imaging |
| Spering, Miriam | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Biological sciences; vision; movement; perception and action; eye movements; hand movements; eye-hand coordination; sport vision; Parkinson's disease |
| Stoessl, A Jon | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Parkinson's disease |
| Subramaniam, Sriram | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Medical, health and life sciences; cryo-EM; cryo-electron microscopy; Cryoelectron Microscopy; Scanning Electron Microscopy; Advanced Electron Microscopy; drug discovery; Drug-design; Focused ion beams; Electron tomography; Tomography; Single particle imaging; Single particle analysis; structural bioinformatics; Structural Biology; COVID-19 therapeutic design |
| Swindale, Nicholas Vaughan | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Bioinformatics; Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Eye and Visual System Diseases; Neuronal Modeling; Neuronal Systems; Visual System |
| Tam, Roger | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Machine learning; Biomedical signal processing; Biomedical Design and Innovation; Biomedical Technologies; Computer Science and Statistics; Data Analytics; Medical Imaging; Machine Learning; Neurodegenerative diseases; Precision Medicine; Radiology |
| Tetzlaff, Wolfram | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neural development and regeneration |
| Todd, Rebecca | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Psychology and cognitive sciences; Human Cognition and Emotion; Neurophenomenology and participatory sensemaking; Dance as a laboratory for interactive cognition; cognition; Emotional learning; Human Neurocognitive processes underlying all of the above; Learning and Memory; Motivation, Emotions and Rewards |
| Traboulsee, Tony | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurology; Central nervous system; Biomedical signal processing; Machine learning; Imaging; magnetic resonance imaging; multiple sclerosis; neuromyelitls optica (NMO) |
| Tremlett, Helen | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Epidemiology (except nutritional and veterinary epidemiology); multiple sclerosis; Neuroepidemiology; Pharmacoepidemiology; prodrome,; Drug safety and effectiveness; Pharmacogenomics; comorbidities; health administrative data; Gut microbiome; prodromes |
| Vanderwal, Tamara | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Functional Neuroimaging; child psychiatric disorders; depression in youth |
| Viau, Victor | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Basic medicine and life sciences; Sex differences; Stress responses; Glucocorticoids; Inflammation; Behavior; Central Nervous System; Endocrinology |
| Vila-Rodriguez, Fidel | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Brain stimulation Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) Theta-bust stimulation (TBS) Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST) Depression Psychosis Schizophrenia |
| Vilarino-Guell, Carles | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Genetic medicine; Health counselling; Genetic Diseases; multiple sclerosis; Neurological disorders; Neuromyelitis optica |
| Virji-Babul, Naznin | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Concussion/mild traumatic brain injury, Developmental disabilities (Down’s syndrome), Developmental neuroscience (mirror neurons, perception-action coupling) |