SFARI Spring 2022 Investigator Meeting

Apr 11, 2022, 12:00 AM → Apr 13, 2022, 1:00 PM America/New_York

160 Fifth Avenue

Dear Investigators,

The SFARI Spring 2022 Investigator Meeting is scheduled for April 11th through the 13th at the Simons Foundation in New York City. I am delighted that you can attend and, as the new SFARI Director, very much look forward to meeting all of you and learning more about your science.

The annual science meeting provides a unique opportunity to bring the SFARI community together to share recent discoveries and advances in autism research and to engage in lively and open discussions. We have organized the meeting to ensure time for individual presentations and for interactive group discussions and encourage your active participation throughout the meeting. We consider that collaborative and interdisciplinary studies, sharing of resources, inclusion of a diversity of perspectives and opinions, and rapid dissemination of discoveries through preprint servers and publications are all critical to achieving our shared mission of advancing the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders. I hope that you will use this meeting to establish new scientific collaborations and to hear about new tools, resources and scientific advances that may enhance your studies.

This year, we hope to continue the momentum from past meetings by sharing unpublished, and sometimes provocative, data, as well as new hypotheses that stimulate each of us to test and thereby advance the fields of brain and autism research. We will consider the event a success if you depart feeling intellectually rejuvenated, with an increased commitment to address the major scientific challenges that must be overcome to better understand brain function and to develop treatments for autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders.

I thank you in advance for sharing your data and contributing your scientific expertise, time and effort to these endeavors. All of us on the SFARI science team will also appreciate your feedback after the meeting. We want to make future meetings as stimulating and useful for you as possible and will welcome your recommendations for changes or improvements after the meeting. You will receive a questionnaire shortly after the meeting that you can use to provide these comments.

Finally, while we very much look forward to in person interactions with all of you, we are also carefully monitoring the pandemic to ensure that we can convene safely and will inform you if there are any changes in our in-person meeting plans. 

We kindly ask that you register by Friday, March 4.

 

Very best regards,

Kelsey Martin, M.D., Ph.D.

Director, SFARI
Director, Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations

SFARI Spring 2022 Investigator Meeting Participant List

Monday, April 11

8:00 AM Breakfast (@160 and @162)

Welcome and Introduction: David Spergel, Ph.D. (President, Simons Foundation)

Welcome and Introduction: Kelsey Martin, M.D., Ph.D. (Director, SFARI and Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations)

Session 1: Genetic causes of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders: Session Introduction: Alan Packer, Ph.D. (SFARI) (@162)

Talk: Michael Talkowski, Ph.D. (Massachusetts General Hospital; Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard)

Insights into the allelic architecture of autism spectrum disorder from rare coding variation

Talk: Yufeng Shen, Ph.D. (Columbia University)

Integrating de novo and inherited variants in over 42,607 autism cases identifies new risk genes with moderate effect

Talk: Kavitha Sarma, Ph.D. (The Wistar Institute)

Elucidating the consequence of R-loop accumulation in autism spectrum disorders

10:40 AM Coffee Break

Talk: Elise Robinson, Sc.D. (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)

Statistical and functional convergence of common and rare variant risk for neuropsychiatric disease at chromosomes 16p and 22q

Talk: Beate St Pourcain, Ph.D. (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)

Polygenic pleiotropy within ASD and ADHD genetic architectures: Shared risk alleles with discordant polygenic effects

Panel Discussion: Moderator: Daniel Geschwind, M.D., Ph.D. (University of California, Los Angeles)

12:30 PM Lunch (@160 + @162) and Bridge to Independence Fellows Networking Lunch (@160)

Session 2: Homeostatic plasticity and sleep in neurodevelopmental disorders: Session Introduction: Brigitta Gundersen, Ph.D. (SFARI) (@160)

Talk: Graeme Davis, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco)

Homeostatic plasticity: A biochemical mechanism of brain resilience relevant to the etiology and treatment of neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders

Talk: Graham Diering, Ph.D. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Developmental sleep disruption as a risk factor in autism spectrum disorder

3:05 PM Coffee Break

Talk: Shinjae Chung, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania)

Neural mechanisms underlying sleep disturbances in autism spectrum disorder

Panel Discussion: Moderator: Kevin Bender, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco)

Closing Remarks: Day 1

Cocktail Reception and Clinical and Cognitive Science Social (@160)

4:45 - 5:15 - Social (Promenade)
5:15 - 5:45 - Introduction and Highlights from 2021 Human Cognitive and Behavioral Science RFA awardees (Auditorium)
5:45 - 6:15 - Social (Promenade)

6:15 PM Dinner

6:15 – 6:30 pm: Guests depart for dinner
6:30 – 8:00 pm: Dinner at Black Barn (19 E 26th St)

Tuesday, April 12

8:00 AM Breakfast (@160 and @162)

Session 3: Gene expression, Cells and Behavior: Session Introduction: Julia Sommer, Ph.D. (SFARI) (@162)

Session Introduction: Julia Sommer, Ph.D. (SFARI)

Talk: John Rubenstein, M.D., Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco)

Sequential functions of ASD risk gene Tbr1 in mouse cortical cell fate specification and synapse formation: Phenotypic rescue by augmenting WNT signaling

Talk: Beatriz Rico, Ph.D. (Kings College London)

Synapse-specific regulation of protein synthesis for cortical wiring

10:05 AM Coffee Break

Talk: Renata Batista-Brito, Ph.D. (Albert Einstein College of Medicine)

Mef2c-mediated developmental dysfunction of parvalbumin-expressing interneurons

Talk: Hirofumi Morishita, M.D., Ph.D. (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)

Role of autism risk genes in frontal-thalamic projections underlying social processing in mice

Panel Discussion: Moderator: Mriganka Sur, Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

12:00 PM Lunch (@160 and @162) and Genomics of ASD Networking Lunch (@160)

Session 4: Human Research Studies: Session Introduction: Paul Wang, M.D. (SFARI/Clinical Research Associates) (@160)

Talk: Amina Abubakar, Ph.D. (The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and Aga Khan University)

Challenges and opportunities in carrying out research on neurodevelopmental disorders in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from the Neurodev Study

Talk: Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, Ph.D. (Simons Foundation)

Microbiome and other multi-scale associations along the gut-brain axis in autism

Talk: Rachel Kelly, Ph.D. (Harvard Medical School)

Integrative metabolomic endotyping of autism spectrum disorders

2:50 PM Coffee Break

Talk: John Murray, Ph.D. (Yale University)

Mapping brain-behavior relationships in autism

Panel Discussion: Moderator: TBD

4:05 PM Coffee Break

Keynote Panel: What's next in ASD Research: Perspectives from ASD parent-scientists: Panelists: Ted Abel, Ph.D. (University of Iowa) || Michael Boland, Ph.D. (Columbia University) || Pamela Feliciano, Ph.D. (SPARK) || Soo-Kyung Lee, Ph.D. (University at Buffalo) || Moderator: Alice Luo Clayton (SFARI) (@160)

Closing Remarks: Day 2

Cocktail Reception with Demo and Poster Session (@160)

7:00 PM Dinner

7:00 – 7:15 pm Guests depart for dinner
7:15 – 8:45 pm Dinner at Kyma (15 W 18th St.)

Wednesday, April 13

8:00 AM Breakfast (@160 and @162)

Session 5: Emerging Therapeutic Opportunities: Session Introduction: John Spiro, Ph.D. (SFARI) (@162)

Talk: Arkady Khoutorsky, D.V.M., Ph.D. (McGill University)

The integrated stress response pathway controls autism-related features in a cell-type-specific manner

Talk: Allison Bradbury, Ph.D. (Nationwide Children's Hospital; The Ohio State University)

Optimization and validation of gene therapy using patient specific in vitro and in vivo models of SLC6A1 related autism disorder

10:05 AM Coffee Break

Talk: Christopher Ahern, Ph.D. (University of Iowa)

Molecular spell-checking with tRNA to correct stop codonopathies

Talk: Richard Huganir, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University)

Regulation of synaptic plasticity by SynGAP

Panel Discussion: Moderator: Joseph Gleeson, M.D. (University of California, San Diego)

Closing Remarks: Kelsey Martin, M.D., Ph.D. (SFARI)

12:00 PM Lunch (@160 and @162) and Departures

Lunch is also available to go

After 1pm, all departures will leave from 162 Fifth Avenue.