Consortium
Dr. Nora Abrous (link)
Institution: INSERM – Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), France
Funding Agency: French Research Agency (ANR)
Scientific Focus: Dr. Abrous leads pioneering work on adult hippocampal neurogenesis and cognitive ageing. Her lab was the first to show a correlation between neurogenesis and spatial memory performance in ageing. She uses advanced tools such as optogenetics and pharmacogenetics to manipulate newly born neurons in behavioral tasks.
Contribution to SI-ADO-AGEING: Leads the overall coordination of the project and provides critical expertise in ageing-related neuronal plasticity, adult-born neuron manipulation, and behavioral phenotyping in animal models.
Dr.-Ing. Hayder Amin (link)
Institution: German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Germany
Funding Agency: Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space of Germany (BMFTR)
Scientific Focus: Dr. Amin leads the BIONICS group at DZNE, investigating how complex biological systems compute, adapt, and break down across the lifespan. By developing lab‑on‑chip neuroelectronic platforms and integrating large‑scale recordings with computational modelling, multimodal data, and machine learning, his work bridges biology, engineering, and data science to uncover multiscale principles of system dynamics.
Contribution to SI-ADO-AGEING: Leads the assessment of hippocampal circuit-level changes following adolescent stress using high-resolution HD-MEA technologies, large-scale neural recordings, and computational decoding of network resilience.
Prof. Carlos Fitzsimons (link)
Institution: University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Funding Agency: Dutch Research Council (NWO)
Scientific Focus: Prof. Fitzsimons is an expert in stress biology and the role of glucocorticoid receptors (GRs) in neural stem cell regulation. His group studies how GR signaling modulates adult neurogenesis and microglial function.
Contribution to SI-ADO-AGEING: Leads investigations on GR-mediated pathways and stress hormone effects on neurogenesis and resilience using genetic and transcriptomic tools.
Prof. Jan Rodriguez Parkitna (link)
Institution: Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Funding Agency: National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR)
Scientific Focus: Prof. Parkitna studies the molecular mechanisms underlying drug action and reward processing, including GR signaling, opioid systems, and transcriptomic markers of behavior.
Contribution to SI-ADO-AGEING: Leads the behavioral phenotyping and transcriptomic profiling of stress responses, helping identify molecular signatures of vulnerability and resilience.
Prof. Lene Juel Rasmussen (link)
Institution: University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Funding Agency: Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD)
Scientific Focus: Prof. Rasmussen is a leader in mitochondrial biology, focusing on DNA damage, oxidative stress, and the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases.
Contribution to SI-ADO-AGEING: Leads analysis of mitochondrial function, redox balance, and mitophagy in adult-born neurons to understand their role in stress-induced ageing.
Dr. Hazel Hunt (Non-funded Partner)
Enterprise: Corcept Therapeutics, USA
Funding: In-kind contribution
Scientific Focus: Dr. Hunt is a senior scientist and CSO at Corcept, a pharmaceutical leader in developing selective glucocorticoid receptor (GR) modulators. Her expertise spans drug discovery and preclinical development of GR-targeting compounds.
Contribution to SI-ADO-AGEING: Provides GR-modulating compounds to the consortium and consults on pharmacological targeting of stress pathways.
