12:00 Kim C. Willment, Ph.D.
12:15 Karen Dixon, Ph.D.
12:30 Nagendran Ramalingam, Ph.D.
12:45 Sarah E. Conway, M.D.
Dr. Kim Willment is a board-certified neuropsychologist in the Department of Neurology. She founded and is now the Director of the Resilience through Neurological and Emotional Wellness – RENEW Program. RENEW offers a range of comprehensive care and group skills training to promote recovery and adjustment to neurologic illness/injury and support brain and emotional wellness for people with neurologic disorders. These group-based services provide education, cognitive skills training, therapeutic support and enrichment services. As RENEW clinical programs continue to expand, Dr. Willment has also started developing RENEW’s research agenda to promote treatment innovation.
Dr. Karen O. Dixon is Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a postdoctoral scholar in the Immunology Program at the Broad Institute. Dr. Dixon completed her training as a medical scientist in Ireland, specializing in Clinical Immunology and Hematology. She undertook her graduate studies on the complement system and dendritic cells in the Netherlands, and was awarded her Ph.D in 2016, before joining the Kuchroo Lab later that year. Dr. Dixon’s expertise is Immunology, and her current research focuses on myeloid cell determinants of anti-tumor immunity.
Dr. Nagendran Ramalingam’s current research focuses on activity-dependent α-synuclein (αS) homeostasis and cytoskeleton dysfunction in Parkinson Disease (PD). He is a trained cell biologist who is using relevant cellular models to understand αS pathophysiology. After acquiring a Bachelor of Science in Botany in 1997, he majored in Biochemistry for a Master of Science in 1999 from Bharathidasan University, Trichy, India. He then obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Biology, specialization in Cell Biology from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany in 2009. For his Ph.D. thesis, he worked with Dr. Michael Schleicher to study cell migration in the context of actin cytoskeleton signaling. Subsequently, he joined the Gundersen lab at Columbia University, as a postdoctoral research scientist. During his post-doctoral training, he further developed and extended my expertise in cell migration to microtubule dynamics. In 2014, he accepted his first faculty position as an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University. In the Levy lab, he studied the causes and consequences of αS-S129 phosphorylation, a major hallmark of PD pathology. This work was done in collaboration with the labs of Selkoe and Dettmer at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, BWH. He moved to Boston in 2017 to formally join the Dettmer lab as a Research Fellow and subsequently became an Instructor in Neurology in summer 2021. He is excited to combine his prior experience in cytoskeleton signaling with neuronal cell biology to understand αS physiology and identify new therapeutic targets for PD. He intends to continue balancing his research on both the physiology and pathology of αS at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases.
Dr. Sarah Conway is currently an associate neurologist at BWH specializing in multiple sclerosis/neuroimmunology. She also is part of the neurohospitalist division and attends on the inpatient and consult services. She completed her medicine internship at BWH, and neurology residency at MGB where she served as chief resident. She then completed a fellowship in MS/neuroimmunology at BWH, and is thrilled to have recently joined the faculty. She is actively involved in clinical research and medical education. She is currently the Neurology liaison to the Internal Medicine department at BWH where she is working on improving the neurology education of our internal medicine residents. Her main research is focused on COVID-19 infection and vaccination in MS patients.
Steps to claim CME credits for BWH Neurology Grand Rounds 2020-2021:
Text this code "BEHVEX” to 1-857-214-2277.
- A link will be sent to your email. Click on the link and complete the evaluation. After you complete the evaluation, your CME will be recorded. You will then be able to download a PDF of your certificate.
If you have any questions about the CME credit, please contact Partners Office of Continuing Professional Development at PartnersCPD@partners.org.
