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UNC School of Medicine researchers Sarah Cohen, PhD, and Mohanish Deshmukh, PhD, along with Stanford’s Serena Young, PhD, were selected for second-phase funding for the CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network.


As part of the Chan Zuckerberg Intitiative (CZI) Neurodegeneration Challenge Network (NDCN), 16 projects were funded for the second phase of its Collaborative Pairs Program. In the first phase of Collaborative Pairs, 30 pairs of labs were funded for 18-month pilot projects to catalyze new collaborations and develop novel approaches to understand the fundamental biology of neurodegenerative diseases.

UNC School of Medicine assistant professor Sarah Cohen, PhD, and professor Mohanish Deshmukh, PhD, both in the UNC Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, were selected as one of 30 CZI collaborative pairs in 2020 with Stanford’s Serena Young, PhD, and now the collaborators have been named as one of 16 research teams to receive second-round funding. Deshmukh is a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center.

Their project is titled, “Illuminating Organelle Dynamics in Development and Neurodegeneration,” and its purpose is to use state-of-the-art imaging techniques to better visualize and understand specific brain dynamics underlying conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Read more about their project here.