Jingqiong Kang (Katty), MD, PhD

Jingqiong
(Katty)
Kang
MD, PhD
Associate Professor
Neurology

Dr. Jing-Qiong (Katty) Kang is an associate professor specialized in epilepsy in the Vanderbilt University Department of Neurology since September 2016. She is also a faculty member in Vanderbilt Brain Institute, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. 

Dr. Kang has been invited to present her work in multiple institutes and conferences nationally and internationally. Most recently, she has spoken at American Epilepsy Meeting (AES), Fukuoka University Medical School, Case Western Reserve University, Beijing Tiantan Neurosurgery Summit. She has been the chair for Basic Mechanisms and Neuroscience symposium at the AES meeting from 2015-2018. Dr. Kang is an award recipient of Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), Dravet.org (formerly known as IDEA-League), Dravet syndrome foundation (DSF) and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). She is currently leading a large effort for developing treatment options for GABA transporter 1 encoding SLC6A1 mediated epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Dr. Kang received her MD/PhD degree from Tongji Medical University, China. Prior to that, she worked at Tongji Hospital. She joined Dr. Kenneth Maiese in the Wayne State University Department of Neurology in August 2001 to study neurodegeneration before she joined Dr. Robert Macdonald’s lab at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2003. 

Dr. Kang is interested in understanding the pathophysiology of GABAA receptor gene mutations in various epilepsy syndromes including Dravet syndrome. Her major contributions include but are not limited to three areas: 

  1. Dr. Kang’s research has elucidated the detailed trafficking trajectory of GABAA receptors and demonstrated that the impaired trafficking is the major defect for those GABAA receptor mutations associated with epilepsy. 
  2. Her research has changed the dogma that there is no neuronal death in genetic epilepsy and first demonstrated that some GABRG2 mutations associated with severe epilepsy form protein aggregates and had similar protein metabolism as those mutations associated with neurodegenerative diseases. 
  3. Her work has elucidated the molecular basis of epilepsy heterogeneity and first demonstrated that loss-of-function mutations on GABRG2 is not equal to functional hyploinsufficiency. 
  4. Her ongoing work proposes that GABA transporter mutations may have similar trafficking defects as seen in GABAA receptor mutations.

Dr. Kang’s current research centers around using patient derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and genetically modified mouse models to understand the role of GABAA receptors and GABA transporters in normal development and diseased conditions especially epilepsy and treatment development. 

Donate to support Dr. Katty Kang's Neurology Research

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Angela L. Jefferson, PhD

Angela
L.
Jefferson
PhD
Vice Chair
Scientific Innovation & Strategy
Director
Vanderbilt Memory & Alzheimers Center
Professor
Neurology
Herbert O. and Vineta Christopher Director
Alzheimer's Disease
Director
Vanderbilt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
Principal Investigator
Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project
Director
Vanderbilt Interdisciplinary Training Program in Alzheimer’s Disease

Dr. Angela L. Jefferson is a licensed clinical psychologist, Professor of Neurology, and Founding Director of the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is principal investigator of the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project, a longitudinal cohort study examining the complex intersection of vascular health and Alzheimer’s disease, and she is Director of the NIA-funded P20 Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center where she leads the Tennessee Alzheimer’s Project. Dr. Jefferson has extensive leadership and research experiences in the fields of cerebrovascular aging and Alzheimer’s disease. She serves as a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment Advisory Council.

Dr. Jefferson has a long-standing commitment to professional education and training. She has held an NIA-funded K24 mentorship award since 2013, providing protected time to support the professional development of early career clinician scientists. She is the Director of the NIA-funded Vanderbilt Interdisciplinary Training Program in Alzheimer’s Disease (T32), and she is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the prestigious Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Program. 

Dr. Jefferson’s research program focuses on understanding complex relations between vascular hemodynamics and the pathogenesis and clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease, cerebral small vessel disease, and related dementias. She has published more than 100 manuscripts and book chapters, underscoring the implications of compromised vascular health on brain integrity in aging adults. Her work emphasizes the intersection of systemic vascular disease, cerebral small vessel disease, and Alzheimer’s disease on brain aging outcomes. She was the first investigator to show that suboptimal reductions in cardiac output relate to lower cerebral blood flow [PubMed] and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia [PubMed]. For more information on Dr. Jefferson’s research portfolio, please visit the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center’s website.

David Isaacs, MD

David
Isaacs
MD
Associate Professor
Neurology

David Isaacs is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center with fellowship-training in movement disorders. Clinically, he is part of the VUMC Parkinson’s Disease Center of Excellence, Huntington’s Disease Center of Excellence, and Deep Brain Stimulation Clinic. In 2019, he founded the Vanderbilt Adult Tourette Syndrome Clinic to promote specialized clinical care and advance research initiatives in this patient population. In collaboration with Dr. Heather Riordan, he established the Vanderbilt Tourette Syndrome Working Group in 2020, a cross-disciplinary, trans-institutional consortium that meets monthly to review journal articles, discuss challenging clinical case, and develop research projects centered on Tourette syndrome. In 2021, he received the Vanderbilt Faculty Research Scholar Award, a career development award that will provide protected time and pilot funding to support his Tourette syndrome research.

Dr. Isaacs is a current member of the Movement Disorders Society and the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. In 2015, he received both the Medical Student Teaching Award and the James Tru Martin Award for the Vanderbilt Department of Neurology. 

Dr. Isaacs earned his B.S. in Biophysics from the University of Southern Indiana and subsequently graduated from medical school at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He completed his neurology residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2015, serving as Chief Resident his final year. The following year he completed his Movement Disorders Fellowship at Vanderbilt before joining the faculty in 2016. In 2019, he earned his master’s degree in public health. 

Dr. Isaacs’ research interests primarily focus on the following: 1) Tourette syndrome, 2) non-motor manifestations of movement disorders; 3) translational neurophysiologic biomarkers; and 4) neuromodulation.

He oversees longitudinal studies assessing non-motor manifestations of Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Tourette syndrome; each of these projects are actively enrolling subjects. He is employing event-related potentials and quantitative electroencephalography to detect novel brain-based indicators of sensory dysfunction in Tourette syndrome, with the ultimate intent to identify and validate translational neurophysiologic biomarkers. 

Dr. Isaacs serves as site principal investigator for several industry-sponsored clinical trials in Tourette syndrome. Additionally, he participates as co-investigator and/or rater in clinical trials for Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, dystonia, and spasticity.

Timothy J. Hohman, PhD

Timothy
James
Hohman
PhD
Professor
Neurology

Dr. Timothy Hohman is a Professor of Neurology, cognitive neuroscientist, and computational geneticist. Dr. Hohman’s research leverages advanced computational approaches from genomics, proteomics, and neuroscience to identify novel markers of Alzheimer’s disease risk and resilience. He leads the Biomarker Core for the Vanderbilt Memory & Alzheimer’s Center and holds leadership positions in multiple international consortia, including serving as the Contact-PI for the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project Phenotype Harmonization Consortium (ADSP-PHC; U24-AG074855) and directing the Genomics Core for the Preclinical Alzheimer’s Consortium.

Dr. Hohman received his BA in Psychology (magna cum laude) from Gordon College, followed by his MA in Psychology from American University. He received his doctoral degree in neuroscience from American University focusing on cognitive and neural changes during normal aging. He also completed a fellowship as part of the National Institutes of Health Graduate Partnership Program in the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging.  He completed his postdoctoral training at Vanderbilt where he was a T32 postdoctoral research fellow as part of the Neurogenomics training program in 2012, a recipient of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in translational medicine and therapeutics in 2013, and a K12 Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Scholar in 2015.Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Scholar in 2015. 

Dr. Hohman’s programmatic research focuses on understanding how certain individuals are able to accumulate Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology without showing clinical symptoms of the disease. He has identified molecular drivers of such resilience through genomic and proteomic analyses leveraging neuroimaging and neuropathology endophenotypes. Dr. Hohman’s team also integrates these diverse data types into a precision medicine approach, focusing on characterizing the best predictors of risk and resilience given an individual’s age, sex, genetic, and neuropathological context. Through transdisciplinary collaboration, Dr. Hohman’s team seeks to facilitate a more rapid move from genomic discovery to therapeutic development.

More information on Dr. Hohman’s research can be found on the VMAC website.

Computational Neurogenomics Team

Amanda C. Hicklin, MSN

Amanda
C.
Hicklin
MSN
Assistant
Neurology

Amanda Hicklin is an Advanced Practice Nurse specializing in Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. As an outpatient nurse practitioner, she diagnoses and treats patients with a variety of sleep disorders. She is a member of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

Prior to her current role at Vanderbilt, Amanda worked as a nurse practitioner in a variety of clinical settings. She also gained experience as an ECMO specialist at VUMC.

Amanda received an associate degree in respiratory sciences from Itawamba Community College. After working as a registered respiratory therapist for several years, she later earned her Master of Science in Nursing from Vanderbilt University. 

Travis Hassell, MD, PhD

Travis
Hassell
MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Neurology

Dr. Travis Hassell is an Assistant Professor of Neurology specializing in Movement Disorders at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His clinical practice and research focuses both on movement disorders and bioengineering, with an emphasis on developing new device technologies such as adaptive deep brain stimulation (DBS). Dr. Hassell also provides instruction in inpatient and outpatient clinical settings for medical students and residents. He is currently a member of the North American Neuromodulation Society, the Movement Disorders Society, the American Academy of Neurology, and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). 

Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Hassell completed a Movement Disorders Fellowship at VUMC. He earned his MD from the Indiana University School of Medicine in 2012, and subsequently completed his medical internship at St. Elizabeth Medical Center (Youngstown, OH) and Neurology residency at Indiana University (Indianapolis, IN), serving as Chief Resident his final year. Dr. Hassell earned his doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), graduating summa cum laude with a thesis studying devices for real-time monitoring of central nervous system recovery. He received his BS in Biological Engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Missouri – Columbia. 

Dr. Hassell’s research interests focus on the intersection of engineering and the treatment of neurological movement disorders. He is currently participating as Primary Investigator (PI) or Sub-PI in clinical trials studying DBS devices.

Ye Han, PhD

Ye
Han
PhD
Research Associate Professor
Neurology

Dr. Ye Han is a Research Associate Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, specializing in molecular/cellular mechanism studies of neurological disorders. Her research focuses on studying the structure and function of HCN channels and its auxiliary subunit, TRIP8b in the dorsal hippocampus and related neural circuitry with the hope of finding new therapies to treat neurological diseases. Dr. Han completed her PhD in molecular biology in the laboratory of Drs. Kang Chong and Zhihong Xu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Han’s research has resulted in important contributions to the understanding of the role of TRIP8b in regulating HCN channel function. In particular, she was the first to report that TRIP8b and HCN interact at two distinct sites and that cAMP may directly compete for binding the HCN CNBD domain to control HCN channel trafficking and function. Subsequently, she identified the first known small molecule inhibitor of the interaction between TRIP8b and HCN using high throughput screening techniques. She recently demonstrated that modulating the TRIP8b-HCN interaction bidirectionally influences channel trafficking and antidepressant-like behavior.

Dr. Han’s current research focuses on developing novel antidepressant therapies based on the lab’s discovery that TRIP8b, an auxiliary subunit of HCN channels, regulates antidepressant-like behavior. She previously demonstrated that TRIP8b regulates HCN channel surface expression and subcellular localization by binding to pore forming subunits at two distinct locations. She subsequently examined the structure-function relationship of TRIP8b mediated HCN channel trafficking using viral mediated rescue experiments in TRIP8b knockout animals. She found that restoring TRIP8b expression to the hippocampi of TRIP8b knockout animals impaired the animal’s performance on screening tests for antidepressant efficacy. She also showed that reducing TRIP8b mediated HCN channel trafficking in the hippocampus improved the animal’s performance on the same tests. These results indicated that inhibiting TRIP8b mediated HCN channel trafficking is a promising target for novel antidepressant therapies.

Mallory Hacker, PhD, MSCI

Mallory
Hacker
PhD, MSCI
Assistant Professor
Neurology

Dr. Hacker is Assistant Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She received the 2019 Kumar New Investigator Award from the North American Neuromodulation Society. She has received funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Department of Defense's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP), the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), and the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA). 

Dr. Hacker earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 2007 from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She attended Vanderbilt University where she earned a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology studying neurodegenerative pathways arising from Coenzyme Q deficiency in 2013. She received postdoctoral training in neurology clinical research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and was a visiting assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in 2016. She completed the Vanderbilt School of Medicine Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (MSCI) program in 2019.

Dr. Hacker’s research focuses on understanding the effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in very early-stage Parkinson’s disease patients and studying objective methods to evaluate Parkinson’s disease progression. She also investigates the prevalence and impact of spasticity in the long-term care setting as well as ways to improve its screening, referral, and treatment. 

Newswise: Sweet-Spot Brain Stimulation May Halt Parkinson’s Progression

VUMC Reporter: Deep brain sweet spot might be key to halt Parkinson’s

Neurology Advisor: Benefits of Deep Brain Stimulation for Early Stage Parkinson Disease

Technology Networks: 5-year Study Shows the Long-term Efficacy of Deep Brain Stimulation in Parkinson's

Medical Xpress: Nursing home study reveals 'woeful' underdiagnosis of spasticity

VUMC Discover: Reducing Untreated Spasticity in the Elderly

VUMC Reporter: Neuromodulation Society honors Hacker’s Parkinson’s research

The Tennessean: For Parkinson’s patients, a surreal brain surgery offers new hope

VUMC Reporter: DBS treatment may slow tremor progression in early-stage Parkinson’s patients

VUMC Reporter: Trial to test whether DBS slows Parkinson’s progression

 

 

Kevin Haas, MD, PhD

Kevin
Haas
MD, PhD
Division Chief
Epilepsy
Clinical Director
Epilepsy Surgery
Professor
Neurology

Dr. Kevin Haas joined the Vanderbilt Neurology Department faculty in 2004. His clinical focus is epilepsy and he serves as Clinical Director of the Epilepsy Surgery Program and as EEG Laboratory Director.  He rotates as an attending physician on the Neuro-ICU EEG and Epilepsy Monitoring Unit services. He is board certified in Neurology, Epilepsy, and Epilepsy Monitoring.  Dr. Haas is a fellow of the American Epilepsy Society, a fellow of the American Neurological Association, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

Dr. Haas earned his BS in biomedical engineering from Duke University in 1991, graduating magna cum laude with distinction. His completed his graduate and medical school training at the University of Michigan, where he earned his PhD degree in neuroscience in 1998 and MD degree in 1999. At Emory University, he completed his internal medicine internship in 2000, neurology residency in 2003, and clinical neurophysiology fellowship with an emphasis in epilepsy in 2004. He served as chief resident in neurology for the 2002-2003 medical year.

Dr. Haas’s clinical research projects focus on epilepsy surgery, ICU-EEG monitoring, epilepsy genetics, and status epilepticus. He is the Vanderbilt site principal investigator for the Critical Care EEG Consortium. In addition, he currently serves as the site principal investigator for multiple clinical trials evaluating new antiepileptic drugs and devices for diagnosis and treatment of medication-resistant epilepsy.  

Dr. Haas’s past research has focused on GABA-A receptor physiology, synaptic roles of ubiquitination, and epilepsy in Angelman syndrome. He is an author on numerous original articles in these fields.