neuroscience graduate students
Dr. McMillan is a faculty affiliate of the Neuroscience Graduate Group (NGG) at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Each PhD Candidate is required to complete three laboratory rotations during their first and second years of the PhD program prior to committing to their dissertation laboratory. Our lab is currently accepting NGG PhD rotation and dissertation students. Please contact us if you are interested in joining Penn BiND as a graduate student.
two postdoctoral fellows
The Penn Bioinformatics in Neurodegenerative Disease Laboratory (Penn BiND) led by Dr. Corey McMillan is currently seeking a qualified applicant for a postdoctoral fellowship. The overall mission of the Penn BiND Lab is to use an integrative strategy leveraging multimodal and bioinformatic approaches to improve our understanding of the biological basis and heterogeneity of neurodegenerative conditions. This clinical-translation research program focuses on using biologically-grounded hypothesis testing along with data-driven novel bioinformatic approaches for relating large-scale ‘omic data (e.g., genomics, DNA methylation, transcriptomics) to deep phenotyping data (e.g., imaging, biofluids, clinical series, neuropathology). We aim to identify phenotype-genotype associations that can be used to uncover mechanisms of disease and/or stratify diverse patients to define homogenous patient groups with a higher likelihood of achieving a therapeutic response. We primarily focus on two classes of neurodegenerative proteinopathies including the misfolded tau protein that contributes to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), primary age-related tauopathy (PART), and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), as well as the TDP-43 protein that contributes to a spectrum of FTLD and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The Penn BiND Lab is a highly interdisciplinary environment based in the Neurology Department of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. We work closely with clinicians in the NIA-funded Alzheimer Disease Center (ADC), Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center (FTDC), and Comprehensive ALS Clinic as well as several national and international consortia. Our lab is also integrated into the FTDC and associated research centers at the University of Pennsylvania including the Institute on Aging (IoA), Penn Neurodegeneration of Genomics Center (PNGC), Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics (ITMAT), and Neuroscience Graduate Group (NGG). Our “dry lab” additionally works very closely with several “wet labs” at Penn to validate our bioinformatic observations in human or model specimens.
We are currently seeking two candidates who have a PhD in a relevant area (e.g., neuroscience, neurology, bioengineering, genetics, computational biology, biostatistics, etc…) and interest in experience in:
(1) Bioinformatics or data science experience that they are interested in applying to neurodegenerative disease and aging
(2) MRI/PET image analysis experience that they are interested in applying to ‘omic studies (e.g., imaging-genetics);