Dr. Naiara Akizu is associate professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Childrens’ Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania, and one of the founding members of the Center for Brain Research in Development, Genetics and Engineering. Dr. Akizu’s lab focuses on translating genetic discoveries into mechanistic and therapeutic insights of neurodevelopmental disorders by uniquely integrating her expertise in human genetics, human pluripotent stem cell technologies, and animal models. Through rigorous mentoring and collaborative spirit, she has revealed novel genetic causes of autism and intellectual disability syndromes, elucidated mechanisms that provide vulnerability to neurodegeneration in children, and generated innovative model systems of brain disorders for functional studies.