Vik Khurana is a Principal Investigator at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Principal Faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an attending neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is the Senior Advisor (Discovery Technologies) to Yumanity Therapeutics, a company he co-founded in 2014. His clinical and research interests relate to neurodegenerative disorders focusing most on Parkinson’s disease, cerebellar ataxias, multiple system atrophy (MSA) and related disorders. He co-directs the P+A+MSA Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Vik is a medical graduate of the University of Sydney, Australia, and came to Boston as a Fulbright Scholar in 2001, obtaining his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University in 2006. He completed his neurology residency at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals, and fellowship in movement disorders and ataxia at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was on the faculty from 2012 to 2016. He received postdoctoral scientific training in the laboratories of Susan Lindquist and Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute, where he co-led a study that succeeded in identifying and reversing pathologies in stem cell models of Parkinson’s disease (Science 2013). He has gone on to demonstrate that genome-scale screening combined with computational network approaches and stem-cell models offer promising approaches for stratifying patients according to disease mechanism (Cell Systems, in press 2016). His current research efforts continue to bring stem-cell technologies toward personalized and precise diagnostics and therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders.
Vik’s research has been recognized through awards from the American Academy of Neurology, American Australian Association, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, Multiple System Atrophy Coalition and Harvard Neurodiscovery Center.
Awards:
2011 American Academy of Neurology Foundation-Parkinson’s Disease Foundation Clinician-Scientist Development Award
2010 American Academy of Neurology Clinical Research Training Fellowship
2006 Cosmos Magazine Award for One of Australia’s Top 10 Scientific Minds Under 45; awarded for research on neurodegenerative diseases
2005 Harvard Medical School Albert J. Ryan Fellowship and Illick Fellow of the Ryan Foundation
2004 Merck Foundation Fellowship (American Australian Association)
2001 Harvard Neurodiscovery Center Predoctoral Fellowship
2001 Fulbright Postgraduate Award
2000 University of Sydney “Honors Class I” awarded for M.B.B.S. degrees
1998 Australian Medical Association JG Hunter Research Scholarship
1995 University of Sydney JT Wilson Prize for Neuroanatomy
1995 University of Sydney Renwick Prize for Greatest Proficiency in Neuroscience
Website:
Khurana Lab
Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases
Harvard Catalyst Profile (with publication list)
Lindquist lab, Whitehead Institute
Recent press:
Parkinson’s Disease Foundation
Cosmos Bright Sparks: Australia’s top 10 young minds announced
