Our Research

A focus of our lab is the identification of molecular and cellular mechanisms of traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI is a devastating disease that impacts over 2 million people annually in the United States and is a leading cause of mortality in children and young adults. Following a severe TBI, most survivors are left with lifelong neurologic disability. Even a mild TBI may result in neurologic dysfunction and an increased lifetime risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease. Unfortunately, there are no targeted pharmacologic therapies for TBI. We use our expertise in preclinical TBI mouse modeling, transgenic mouse lines, and multimodal testing including cutting edge multiomic approaches to study the neuroimmune response initiated by TBI and its contributions to neurologic injury. Our long-term goal is to discover secondary injury pathways that we can target with new or existing drugs, allowing us to prevent progressive neurodegeneration and neurologic dysfunction after a TBI.