Research Team

A 1978 YSM graduate, I am a neurologist/clinical trialist with sub-specialty in Movement Disorders. After 7 years heading the Parkinson and Movement Disorders program at New York-Hospital Cornell, I have spent the majority of his career as an executive in the pharmaceutical industry, leading teams in the areas of neurodegenerative, neuropsychiatric and retinal disorders at Regeneron, Elan, Cytokinetics and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Most recently I led a team at Biogen that advanced 3 new compounds into the clinic for potential treatment of Parkinson’s disease. At Biogen I also established a clinical research program in inherited ataxias. My research activities have encompassed efforts to develop novel clinical outcome measures and biomarkers, including digital health technologies for clinical trials. I have served as chair of the ADNI Private Partner Scientific Board, the Industry Scientific Advisory Board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation-sponsored Parkinson Progression Markers Initiative, and as industry co-chair of the Critical Path for Parkinson’s consortium. I have authored or-co-authored over 100 papers and book chapters, mostly in the area of neurological and opthalmological therapeutics , especially therapeutic development for Movement Disorders.

David Eidelberg, MD, is the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and has served as director of the Center for Neurosciences at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research since its founding in 2001. A neurologist and neuroscientist, he is widely regarded for his pioneering work on network dysfunction in brain disease. He was first to identify metabolic networks as systems-level disease biomarkers in patients and has described previously unrecognized network pathologies. His automated computational approach is currently being used worldwide for the objective assessment of disease progression and treatment responses in individual patients and to enhance diagnostic accuracy. Dr. Eidelberg has authored more than 265 peer-reviewed original articles, 100 reviews and editorials, hundreds of scientific abstracts, and an edited volume (Imaging in Parkinson’s Disease, Oxford University Press, 2011). He serves on the editorial boards of several major journals and is editor-in-chief (Western Hemisphere) of Current Opinion in Neurology. Dr. Eidelberg has received numerous grants and awards, including the 2018 Bachmann-Strauss Prize for his pioneering research in dystonia. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians.

David A. Hafler, M.D. is the William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor and former Chairman Department of Neurology and Professor of Immunobiology, Yale School of Medicine, and was the Neurologist-in-Chief of the Yale-New Haven Hospital. Hafler graduated magna cum laude in 1974 from Emory University with combined B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in biochemistry, and the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1978. He completed his internship in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins followed by a neurology residency at Cornell Medical Center-New York Hospital in New York. Hafler was trained in immunology with Henry Kunkel at the Rockefeller University and then at Harvard Medical School joining the Harvard faculty in 1984. He became the Breakstone Professorship of Neurology at Harvard 1999 and was a founding Associated Member of the Broad Institute at MIT. His discoveries in the pathogenesis and treatment of multiple sclerosis have led to fundamental understanding of the disease and the development of novel treatments. His seminal work includes identification of circulating human autoreactive T cells and the mechanisms that underlie their dysregulation with the discovery of human regulatory T cells. He co-led the discovery of genetic variants causing MS and demonstrated how these variants alter immune responses in relationship to environmental factors such as salt allowing activation of autoreactive T cells. Hafler was founder of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies and the International MS Genetic Consortium. He was a Jacob Javits Merit Award Recipient from the NIH and was awarded the Dystel Prize for MS research from the AAN, the University of Miami Annual Distinguished Alumni Award, the Raymond Adams Prize from the ANA and is the 2023 recipient of the 2023 AAI Steinman Award for Human Immunology Research. Hafler is an Honorary Member of the Scandinavian Society for Immunology a Fellow in the American Association of Immunologist and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been elected to the AOA Society, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, The Association of American Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine.

Yuan Huang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health. Her methodological research is focused on statistical methods for high-dimensional data and has been motivated by challenges posted by analyzing cancer genomics, such as low reproducibly, nonlinearity, and heterogeneity. Applications from her work include biomarker identification, large-scale network structure estimation, GxE analysis, etc. She is particularly interested in integrative analysis that simultaneously analyzes multiple datasets to improve the discovery. Recently she collaborates extensively in neurodegenerative diseases and movement disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington’s disease, and Parkinson's disease . She is also actively involved in collaborative research on clinical trials, genetics, epidemiology, and other biomedical fields.

Veronica Santini, MD, MA, associate professor of neurology, clinical chief of Yale’s Movement Disorders Division, and chief of the Comprehensive Parkinson Disease Care Program, specializes in the clinical and multidisciplinary care of the most complex patients with autonomic dysfunction. Prior to joining Yale School of Medicine, she directed Stanford’s Huntington Disease and Ataxia Multidisciplinary Neurogenetics Clinic, a Huntington’s Disease Society of America Center of Excellence, where she oversaw a large team of specialists providing holistic, patient-centered care and similarly created other multispecialty integrated programs. To provide movement disorder patients with innovative therapies, Dr. Santini launched the Stanford Parkinson Disease Duopa Therapy program; delivered unified, seamless care for patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA); led the clinical trial investigation (and eventual FDA approval) for focused ultrasound thalamotomy for essential tremor; as well as therapeutic and neuroprotective trials for Parkinson’s disease, MSA, and Huntington’s disease. With this distinguished background, Dr. Santini was recruited to serve as the clinical chief of the Yale Movement Disorders Division and inaugural director of the Comprehensive Parkinson Disease Care Program. She leads the division to further optimize the human experience of those with movement disorders. In this role, Dr. Santini has built new methods of diagnostic evaluations, multidisciplinary care models, a longitudinal supportive care program (the “EmPOWERed with Parkinson” program), and developed community outreach strategies. She is simultaneously growing the faculty with diverse expertise, expanding training opportunities and the size of the movement disorders fellowship, and seamlessly integrating clinical research opportunities that impact quality of life. Since her arrival at Yale, the Movement Disorders Division has gained recognition as a world-class movement disorders center and is designated as a Mission MSA Center of Excellence and an American Parkinson Disease Association Center for Advanced Parkinson Research. The Movement Disorders Division has also been recognized as a Center of Excellence by Alpha Omega Alpha and a Parkinson’s Foundation Hospital Care Learning Collaborative. As an experienced medical educator, Dr. Santini has broadly addressed the needs of adult learners (including students, residents, fellows, and expert learners) and created novel andragogical approaches with wide dissemination within and outside the field of neurology. She taught all disciplines to medical students from their first to their graduating years and has been an influential educator for neurology residents and fellows. During her tenure as director of the Required Neurology Clerkship at Stanford, the course was ranked first in the Stanford School of Medicine and approximately 20% above national averages. Her national efforts have focused on increasing student understanding of neurologic disease and increasing the medical student pipeline into neurology. For the expert learner, Dr. Santini chaired the Continuing Medical Education (CME) Committee and guided programming as a member of the Congress Scientific Programming Committee of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS). As chair of the MDS CME Committee, she ensured compliance with the highest ACCME standards and expanded programming to over 40 CME activity offerings yearly with more than 150 credit hours. She oversaw two reaccreditations for the MDS, culminating in the ACCME’s designation of “Accreditation with Commendation.” As a result of this work, the society awarded her with the International 2023 President’s Distinguished Service Award. She has also served the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) educational needs on the Education Committee and the Meeting Management Committee. Due to her efforts, she has won numerous teaching awards, including the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Award for Excellence in Pre-Clinical Teaching, the Lawrence H. Mathers Award for Exceptional Commitment to Teaching and Active Involvement in Medical Education, the Stanford Award for Excellence in Promotion of Humanism, and the Lysa Forno Excellence in Teaching award. Driven by a commitment to social justice and the desire to provide equitable health care, Dr. Santini has a long record of combining her clinical and educational efforts to launch global neurologic programs. She created and implemented a longitudinal, team-based clinical and educational program to provide care to the impoverished nation of Haiti. This program has delivered increased access for neurologic patients and continuity of care, as well as expansion of the clinical services and provider expertise since 2013. Education is a paramount component of the program and has focused on growing the knowledge of local providers and of medical students at the state university. This initiative began the first global health residency training program in neurology at Boston University and was a significant addition to the training programs at Stanford and Yale. In recognition of her leadership and advocacy work, Dr. Santini was selected as a 2016 American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Emerging Leader and a 2015 AAN Palatucci Advocate. She now serves as chair of the AAN’s Early Career Leadership Subcommittee, member of the Leadership Development Committee, and focuses on strategic development within the AAN Health Equity Strategic Initiative Work Group.

Dustin Scheinost, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Biomedical Engineering, Statistics & Data Science, and at the Yale Child Study Center. The Multi-modal Imaging, Neuroinformatics, & Data Science (MINDS) Lab’s research is three-fold. First, using state-of-the-art research in connectomics, we aim to develop novel statistical and machine learning methods for functional connectivity to address challenges arising from the “big” neuroscience data. Second, the MINDS lab helps lead the development of BioImage Suite Web (BISWeb; https://bioimagesuiteweb.github.io/webapp/), an integrated image analysis webapp. Third, we are at the cutting edge of early life neuroimaging, focusing on the development of the brain’s functional organization in fetuses, neonates, and infants. We are a founding member of the Fetal, Infant, Toddler Neuroimaging Group (FIT’NG). This research has been supported by NIMH, NIAA, NIDDK, NIDA, and NHLBI.

John Seibyl, M.D. is Distinguished Scientist and Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders (IND) in New Haven, CT. Prior to IND, Dr. Seibyl was Chief, Section of Nuclear Medicine and Associate Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. He is a pioneer in the use of Dopamine Transporter (DaT) SPECT imaging for the assessment of Parkinson’s disease and related disorders. He serves on the editorial board of the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and is a frequent reviewer for top-tier nuclear imaging journals. He serves on international panels for his work in neurodegenerative disease imaging. He recently re-joined Yale as Adjunct Professor of Neurology.