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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Jeanne T. Paz

Jeanne T. Paz

2019 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Location

San Francisco, CA

Title

Assistant professor, Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease

Area(s) of Research

Neuroscience; neurology; optogenetics; brain disorders; epilepsy; autism; dementia

Education

Stanford University (postdoc);
University Pierre et Marie Curie (PhD, neuroscience;
MS, neuroscience; BSc, cell biology & physiology)

Country of Birth

Georgia

Links to learn more about Jeanne T. Paz's work
  • gladstone.org

Tags
autism biomedical science brain disorders dementia epilepsy georgia Gladstone Institute neurology neuroscience optogenetics women in science women in stem
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Jeanne T. Paz was raised in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the early 1980s. She took inspiration from her physicist parents, accompanying them on visits to a mountaintop observatory and playing with computers in the lab. But her childhood was far from idyllic, unfolding in surroundings where sectarian violence was distressingly common. At the age of 10, her family immigrated to Israel; the Persian Gulf War soon broke out, with Paz witnessing the war’s terrifying toll and facing the ever-present threat of attacks. “As a child, I spent quite some time wearing gas masks,” she says.

A photo of Jeanne T. Paz

In the early 1990s, she returned to Georgia to live with her grandmother, where a civil war raged. “There was not enough money, and for several months, we ate nothing but potatoes. So I grew to love potatoes,” she says. Impelled by the plight of the war’s casualties, Paz resolved to study medicine, a decision that eventually led her to study science: medicine’s bedrock and her real passion.

Paz’s research into the brain mechanisms behind epileptic seizures earned her widespread recognition amongst her peers, and she took a postdoctoral position at Stanford, where she was a pioneering researcher in optogenetics: a field in which light is used to control genetically engineered brain cells in living animals.

A photo of Jeanne T. Paz with a student in her lab

Her optogenetic research has been published in Nature Neuroscience, and forms the potential basis for predicting and arresting seizures, with implications for treating brain disorders such as dementia as well. Though optogenetics is far from ready for use in humans, Paz’s work showcases its power in pinpointing brain regions implicated in disease.

Paz’s contributions led to an assistant professorship at the University of California–San Francisco in 2014 and a joint appointment at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease. Over the next decade, Paz hopes to develop therapeutic approaches for intractable epilepsy.

Jeanne T. Paz at a white board in her office

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Top Reviewer, Nature Publishing Group (2016-2018)
  • CURE Featured Speaker, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (2018)
  • Michael Prize, Michael Foundation (2015)
  • Challenge Award, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (2013)
  • K99/R00 Career Development Award, NIH/NINDS (2012)
Tags
autism biomedical science brain disorders dementia epilepsy georgia Gladstone Institute neurology neuroscience optogenetics women in science women in stem

Jury Members

2019 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Heran Darwin

Professor of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine

Laurie Dempsey

Senior Editor, Nature Immunology, Nature Publishing Group

Yibin Kang

Warner-Lambert Parke-Davis Professor of Molecular Biology, Princeton University

Harmit S. Malik

Principal Investigator, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Peter Palese

Horace W. Goldsmith Professor and Chair of Microbiology, Professor of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Leslie Vosshall

Robin Chemers Neustein Professor, The Rockefeller University

Jedd Wolchok

Lloyd J. Old Chair for Clinical Investigation, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
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Related Prize Recipients

Viviana Gradinaru

Viviana Gradinaru receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for developing next-generation tools in optogenetics, tissue clearing, and gene delivery, with potential therapeutic applications in human diseases.
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Polina Anikeeva

Polina Anikeeva receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for developing novel engineering solutions that have advanced the field of neural engineering and enabled fine-grained analysis of brain function and animal behavior.
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Biyu J. He

Biyu J. He receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for her leadership in the field of cognitive neuroscience, and for her groundbreaking discoveries on the biological bases of perceptual cognition and subjective experience.
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