Featured Speaker: Marguerite Matthews, PhD
Session Organizer: Rujuta Wilson, MD
Discussion Moderator: Audrey Brumback, MD, PhD
Marguerite Matthews, PhD
Marguerite Matthews, PhD is a scientific program manager in the Office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Workforce Diversity at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). As a program manager, Dr. Matthews manages various NINDS diversity initiatives and programs that provide neuroscience research training and career development for underrepresented students and early career investigators. She also supports the NIH UNITE Initiative to address structural racism by serving on Committee I to improve the NIH culture and structure for equity, inclusion and excellence.
Prior to working at NINDS, Dr. Matthews was a 2016-2018 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, supporting policy planning and implementation in the Division of Biomedical Research Workforce and the Division of Loan Repayment. Dr. Matthews is a proud alumna of Spelman College, where she received her BS in biochemistry. She earned a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pittsburgh and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). During her time as a postdoc, Dr. Matthews served as program director for the Youth Engaged in Science (YES!) outreach initiative and program director for the OHSU Fellowship for Diversity in Research Program to recruit and retain postdoctoral researchers from underrepresented backgrounds.
Rujuta Wilson, MD
Audrey Brumback, MD, PhD
Dr. Audrey Brumback is currently a neuroscientist and pediatric neurologist at the University of Texas Dell Medical School. She grew up in Norman, Oklahoma with her parents Roger and Mary and brothers Darryl and Owen. Her first hands-on research experience was through the Sir Alexander Fleming Scholars summer internship program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City under the mentorship of Drs. Michael Dresser and John Harley. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry through the Dean’s Scholars program at the University of Texas at Austin in 1999 under the guidance of Dr. Alan Cline. It was her senior research project with Dr. George Pollak that turned her on to the beauty and power of neurophysiology. She completed her MD and PhD at the University of Colorado Medical Scientist Training Program under the mentorship of Dr. Kevin Staley, where she studied the basic science mechanisms underlying the depolarizing effect of GABA in the neonatal brain. She finished residency at UCSF in 2013 through the Neuroscience Pathway in Child Neurology. During her last year of residency and continuing since then, she has spent the majority of her time in the laboratory of Dr. Vikaas Sohal in the Center for Integrative Neuroscience examining the cellular and circuit mechanisms of autism spectrum disorder.
In addition to her research, Dr. Brumback treats patients in the Sensory, Neurodevelopment & Autism Program and general child neurology clinic at the UCSF Pediatric Brain Center, and is the child neurologist for “Katie’s Clinic” for Rett Syndrome and Related Disorders at UCSF. As she transitions to being an independent investigator, she will focus her energy on studying the mechanisms of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders at the level of cells, circuits, and behavior. Dr. Brumback received the Child Neurology Foundation PERF Research Grant in 2015 and the CNS Philip R. Dodge Young Investigator Award in 2017.