partnership with the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program.
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Dr. Fen-Biao Gao is currently a Professor of RNA Therapeutics and the Founding Director of the Frontotemporal Dementia Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. He holds the Governor Paul Cellucci Chair in Neuroscience Research since 2017. He completed his Ph.D. study at Duke University in 1995 and then did postdoctoral trainings at University College London and University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He established his own laboratory at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at UCSF in 2000. He was then recruited to UMass Chan as a full professor in 2010. Dr. Gao has made significant contributions to our understanding of pathogenic mechanisms of FTD and ALS, in particular on C9ORF72 mutations. He has co-organized several international conferences and served as the chair for the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on FTD and Related Rare Dementias in 2026. Dr. Gao is currently a standing member of the Research Advisory Council of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Medical Advisory Council of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, and the King Trust Basic Sciences Review Committee. Dr. Gao was a Sloan Research Fellow in Neuroscience, a Klingenstein Fellow in Neuroscience, and a recipient of McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award. In 2018, he received a Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the NINDS/NIH. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.