About

Dr. Randy Buckner is the Sosland Family professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Harvard University and is affiliated with the Harvard Center for Brain Science. He is also a Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Director for Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from Washington University and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, where he pioneered new functional MRI methods to study human cognition. His work expanded to include studies of aging and mental health that led to description of the brain’s default network. He also developed widely used neuroinformatics tools to facilitate open data sharing. Dr. Buckner’s awards include the Wiley Young Investigator Award from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, the Young Investigator Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the 2007 Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences, and the 2010 Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer’s Disease from the MetLife Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Robert C. Malenka is the Pritzker Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Nancy Pritzker Laboratory, and a founder of Stanford University’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. His laboratory conducts research on the synaptic and circuit mechanisms that mediate motivated behaviors of relevance to a range of brain disorders including addiction, autism, and depression. In his role at Stanford, Dr. Malenka also serves as an advisor at Bayshore Global Management.

Dr. Malenka is an elected member of the United States’ National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has served on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse and as a Councilor for the Society for Neuroscience and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has received numerous awards including the Pasarow Foundation Award for Extraordinary Accomplishment in Neuropsychiatry Research, the Society for Neuroscience Julius Axelrod Prize, and Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize. His papers have been cited more than 100,000 times and have provided foundational knowledge about the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and modulation in the mammalian brain. He graduated from Harvard College with an MD and from Stanford University School of Medicine with a PhD in neuroscience.

Dr. Sonya Dumanis is the Chief Operating Officer of the Coalition for Aligning Science, where she provides strategic guidance on both the design and implementation phases of portfolio programs and mentors scientific staff across the initiatives under the Coalition’s management. She also serves as the Managing Director for Aligning Discoveries Across Psychedelic Therapies (ADAPT), Deputy Director of Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA), and Deputy Director of Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP).

Previously, Dr. Dumanis was the Vice President of Research and Innovation at the Epilepsy Foundation. While there, she oversaw the growth of the Epilepsy Therapy Project, an entrepreneurship incubator providing seed funding and mentorship to epilepsy startups, and the Epilepsy Innovation Institute, an innovation incubator tackling high-risk projects in the epilepsy space. She continues to co-direct the Epilepsy Startup Accelerator Course and serves as an advisor for the Diagnostics & Tracking Research Roundtable for Epilepsy.

Dr. Dumanis completed her postdoctoral training at both the Johns Hopkins University and the Max-Delbrück Center in Berlin, Germany. She earned her PhD in neuroscience from Georgetown University. She has authored numerous scientific articles and received a number of honors, including an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation fellowship, a national research service award from the National Institutes of Health, the Harold N Glassman Award for best science dissertation at Georgetown University, and the Mark A. Smith prize from the Journal of Neurochemistry.

Dr. Caroline Pantazis is the Associate Director of Research Operations at the Coalition for Aligning Science (CAS), where she works across workstreams to organize and leverage knowledge to support innovation and decision-making. She also serves as the Deputy Director for Aligning Discoveries Across Psychedelic Therapies (ADAPT).

Before joining CAS, Dr. Pantazis served as the lead scientific project manager at the Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias at the National Institute on Aging, where she coordinated and managed large-scale, collaborative research projects in the neurodegenerative disease research space.

Dr. Pantazis completed her postdoctoral training at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, where she focused her research on the neurobiology of addiction and motivated behaviors. She earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Rutgers University and her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Hamilton College.