Fikri Birey, PhD
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Assistant Professor, Department of Human Genetics, School of Medicine
Graduate Programs
- Full Member - Genetics and Molecular Biology
- Full Member - Neuroscience
Education
Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University, 2015PhD, Stony Brook University, 2008
BS, University of Kansas, 2004
Contact Information
Email: fikri.birey@emory.edu
Address:
Whitehead Biomedical Research Building, Suite 305C
615 Michael Street
Atlanta, GA 30322
We are broadly interested in functional interactions within neurobiological systems and various disease states that emerge from their disturbance by genetic factors. During my doctoral work, I described previously unknown roles of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells in maintaining neuronal and astrocytic functions in the adult mouse frontal cortex, a bidirectional crosstalk which is adversely affected by social stress. My postdoctoral research was focused on investigating how pathological gene variants perturb the development of human cortex in various disease states at a molecular, cellular and systems scales. Due to the lack of functional access to human brain tissue, progress in gaining insights into mechanistic interactions between variants and cellular phenotypes in patients has been slow. To address this issue, I developed a human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived in vitro model called "forebrain assembloids" to reliably model key aspects of human forebrain development and uncovered novel disease phenotypes in Timothy Syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by autism and epilepsy and caused by a mutation in a L-type calcium channel subunit. This approach has been widely recognized as a major advancement in the newly emerging field of 3D human neural cultures, has been named one of the top research highlights of 2017 by NIH and has now been adopted across several labs. My group at Emory University works at the intersection of stem cell biology, developmental biology, and neurobiology, where we combine the ever-improving assembloid platform with state-of-the-art techniques, such as CRISPR gene editing, microscopy and single-cell RNA sequencing. We will seek to study the. Our scientific interests are diverse but share the broader goal of better understanding mechanistic interactions underlying human brain development at various scales (molecular, cellular, population) to uncover unifying biological principles behind clinically disparate classes of disorders. Our ultimate ambition is to discover novel, cross- modal disease signatures to better diagnose and treat disorders of brain development that lead to neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders later in life.
Atlanta Society of Mentors (ASOM), 2024
Diversity: Inclusion in the Modern Workplace, 2022
National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) Course: Mentoring Graduate Students, Post Docs & Early Career Faculty, 2024

Lauren Gao (she/her)
Neuroscience
Entrance Year: 2023
Topic: Cellular and Molecular pathophysiology of Alzheimer's Disease

Arvin Sarkissian
Neuroscience
Entrance Year: 2021
Topic: Influence of Cortical Activity on Interneuron Migration and Maturation in Human Forebrain Assembloids

Nisan Sele (she/her)
Neuroscience
Entrance Year: 2023

Roy Simamora (he/him)
Neuroscience
Entrance Year: 2022

Gianna Vitelli (she/her)
Neuroscience
Entrance Year: 2023