GELIFES Seminars - Mallar Chakravarty

Link to seminar

Mallar Chakravarty (McGill University, Canada)

Lost in Translation

Examining ageing and neurodegeneration in humans and mice

Research in ageing and neurodegeneration has witnessed increased availability of large multi-modal datasets that seek to capture biological variation across the lifespan, in prodromal phases of neurodegenerative disorders, and after frank disease onset. Our group, and several others, have been leveraging these incredible datasets to gain insight into how variation in brain structure and function, detectable via neuroimaging, may relate to other disease-related factors. Many of the exciting findings that result from the creative multivariate data fusion techniques employed are somewhat observational. To move beyond these limitations, our group has been working on examining phenotypic variation in model systems exposed to risk or directly to pathological factors for neurodegenerative disorders. Here, I will show new findings across large datasets and carefully curated experimental data to demonstrate the use of magnetic resonance imaging acquisition and analyses in mouse models to better understand the human condition.

Biosketch:
Professor Mallar Chakravarty, PhD, received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from McGill University. He went on to do postdoctoral fellowships in Aarhus, Denmark and jointly at the Rotman Research Institute and at the Mouse Imaging Centre (MICe) and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Between fellowships, Dr. Chakravarty worked at the Allen Institute for Brain Science (Seatte, WA, USA). He is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and is also a James McGill Professor. His laboratory is based in the Douglas Research Centre where he holds leadership roles as the Director of the Cerebral Imaging Centre and NeuroInformatics Platform. In 2023, he was inducted as a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. Website: cobralab.ca.