Seminar – Stacey J. Sukoff Rizzo, Ph.D.

Research in Dr. Rizzo’s lab focuses on investigating the genetic contributions underlying the pathophysiological of diseases of Aging including Alzheimer’s disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and related neuropsychiatric and cognitive co-morbidities, in order to interrogate novel pathways and targets that may enable the identification of new therapeutic agents. Dr. Rizzo is a behavior pharmacologist by training and holds a BS in Animal Sciences from Rutgers University and a PhD in Neuroscience from University College London. She is an internationally recognized expert in behavioral phenotyping and pharmacology of genetic mouse models. Dr. Rizzo previously spent 18 years in the pharmaceutical industry in Neuroscience Drug Discovery departments at Wyeth Research, Merck Research Laboratories, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, and Pfizer where she led and contributed to many drug discovery projects across therapeutic areas. Prior to her current appoint, from 2014-2019, Dr. Rizzo served as Director of Mouse Neurobehavioral Phenotyping at The Jackson Laboratory’s Institute for Mammalian Genetics (JAX) and Associate Director of JAX’s Center for Biometric Analysis. Dr. Rizzo’s lab is a critical component of the NIA funded Model Organism Development for Late Onset Alzheimer’s disease (MODEL-AD) consortium where she co-heads the Preclinical Testing Core which evaluates the potential therapeutic efficacy of novel test compounds for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (www.MODEL-AD.org).