Details



Vincenzo De Paola

Visiting Professor, Signature Research Programme in Neuroscience & Behavioural Disorders

Duke-NUS Medical School

Bio

The goal of Dr De Paola's scientific research is to understand the regulation of neural network connectivity and function in the neocortex, a brain region affected in numerous developmental and degenerative diseases as well as acute injuries, which are incurable to date. To study complex genetic neuropsychiatric conditions such as Down syndrome, his team is building more advanced human experimental in vivo cellular models. The team focuses on the role of the synaptic life cycle (i.e. synapse formation and elimination), and on the mechanisms of axon degeneration and regeneration. The team combines human iPSC models, structural and functional imaging of in vivo self-assembled human cortical circuitry (as in Real et al 2018, complemented with human derived microglia), with state-of-the-art molecular and computational biology skills. 

Dr De Paola's prominent work has significantly advanced our understanding of neuronal circuit dynamics and synaptic plasticity, by producing some of the first reports on the dynamics of synapse formation, elimination and regeneration in the living mammalian brain. This work is now poised to be influential to other fields, as his laboratory builds more advanced human experimental in vivo cellular models to tackle circuit and synapse defects in both neurodevelopmental and degenerative diseases such as Down syndrome.

Dr De Paola received a Ph.D. in molecular and cellular neurobiology from the University of Basel, Switzerland, for work in the laboratory of Dr. Pico Caroni at the Friedrich Miescher Institut, part of the Novartis foundation. He was then awarded an EMBO post-doctoral fellowship to train with Dr. Karel Svoboda at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA. Dr De Paola joined Imperial College London as an Assistant Professor in 2007, and the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences as a Honorary Group Leader in 2008, when he was awarded a MRC Programme Grant to lead the Neuroplasticity and Disease Group. Dr De Paola is a tenured member of the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London since 2013. Dr De Paola moved to the Neuroscience and Behavioural Disorders Programme at Duke-NUS, Singapore, as a full-time Visiting Professor in 2021.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Basel, Switzerland, Switzerland

NUS Appointment(s)

Full-Time Visiting Professor

Duke-NUS Medical School, Currently Active

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