Sarah Kucenas

Sarah Kucenas, PhD, is Co-Director of the Brain Institute and Director of the Program in Fundamental Neuroscience. Dr. Kucenas is a basic scientist fascinated by the cellular and molecular mechanisms that drive glial development. Her research group investigates how glia engineer neural development via glial-glial and neural-glial interactions. Using zebrafish (Danio rerio), coupled with genetic and pharmacological perturbation, single cell manipulation, laser ablation, small molecule screening, single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNAseq), proteomics, and in vivo, time-lapse imaging, her group has discovered novel glial populations, revealed how glia communicate in several unique contexts, and created many new tools for our studies and the broader community. Dr. Kucenas serves on multiple NIH study sections and is a member of the Independent Review Committee for TargetALS. In her time at UVA, she has received the NIH NINDS Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship, the American Society for Neurochemistry Jordi Folch-Pi Award, and the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV).