Brian Wainger, MD, PhD
Principal Investigator
Dr. Wainger is Associate Professor Neurology and Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. He studied molecular biology as an undergraduate at Princeton University and ion channel physiology in the MD/PhD program at Columbia University. He then completed medical residency in the Partners Neurology Program followed by a clinical fellowship in Pain Medicine at MGH and research fellowship with Clifford Woolf at Boston Children’s Hospital. His clinical expertise spans the intersection of neurology and pain medicine.
Christine Marques, PhD
Instructor
Christine earned a degree in biotechnology engineering from Polytech Marseille before completing her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Strasbourg under the mentorship of Dr. Caroline Rouaux. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms that cause dysfunction and degeneration of corticospinal motor neurons in ALS, and she developed a protocol for transcriptomic analysis of pure populations of these neurons in ALS mouse models at various disease stages.
In 2018, Christine joined the Wainger lab, where she expanded her expertise in iPSC technology, high-content imaging, and phenotypic screening. Her research is focused on neuroinflammation in ALS, particularly the role of the STING pathway in ALS-vulnerable neurons. She also works on the development of new ALS models and drug screens aimed at identifying modifiers of C9orf72 dipeptide-mediated neurotoxicity and TDP-43 pathology for clinical translation.
In 2023, Christine was promoted to Instructor. She has received individual funding from multiple sources, including the Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship from the ALS Association, the MassCATs award, the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Development Grant 22, and the Mussallem Transformative Scholar Award.
Aaron Held, PhD
Instructor
Aaron completed his Ph.D at Brown University with Dr. Kristi Wharton and Dr. Diane Lipscombe. His graduate work focused on the mechanisms of motor dysfunction in Drosophila models of ALS and identifying genetic targets for rescuing motor function.
Aaron joined the Wainger lab in December 2018 to continue researching neurodegenerative mechanisms in ALS and expand his skill set to human iPSCs and bioinformatics. His recent paper highlights the importance of cell-type specificity in ALS and illustrates the ability of iPSCs to model dysfunction seen in ALS patient tissue. Aaron was promoted to Instructor in 2023 and has since reincorporated Drosophila genetics into his scientific workflow. His current project focuses on the molecular mechanisms that cause TDP-43 dysfunction in ALS and how to mitigate downstream neurodegeneration. Aaron has received individual funding from several sources, including a Postdoctoral National Research Service Award (F32), a Cullen Education and Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, and a Mussallem Transformative Scholar Award.
Ben Johnston, MD, PhD
Clinical Fellow in Neurosurgery
Ben completed his BA at Hamilton college, PhD at UT Arlington & UT Southwestern Medical Center, and MD at Brown University. His dissertation was on long-gap peripheral nerve injuries and neuroma pain. Ben joined the Wainger lab in August 2021 and is interested in gene therapies to limit chronic pain development and cancers involving the peripheral nervous system. This work was awarded the 2024 Kline Peripheral Nerve Top Abstract Award and the Kuntz Scholar Award at the AANS/CNS Spine Summit. His research projects have received several grants including the NREF & Medtronic Research Fellowship Grant, private funding from The David Borsook Project and The Cathedral Fund at Boston Children’s Hospital. Additionally, he was awarded the Paul Calabresi Career Award for Clinical Oncology Training Grant (National Cancer Institute - K12CA090354). Ben completed an enfolded focused clinical rotation in peripheral nerve and reconstructive neurosurgery at MGH in 2022 with Dr. Justin Brown, MD, and an enfolded fellowship in complex spine surgery at BWH in 2023 with Dr. Michael Groff, MD. He will be an attending physician at Mass General Brigham Neurosurgery following completion of his residency in June 2025.
Courtney Bannerman, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Courtney completed her BSc and PhD at Queen's University in Canada. During her PhD, she investigated the role of the gut microbiome on pain and neuroinflammation after spinal cord injury, as well as the circadian rhythm of thermal nociception.
Courtney joined the Wainger lab in March 2024 and is interested in using gene therapy as a therapeutic for chronic pain.
Remy Y. Meir, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Remy completed her BS at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Neuroscience, after which she completed a research Fulbright under the guidance of Dr. Siri Leknes at the University of Oslo. She then completed her PhD in Neuroscience at Brown University with Dr. Diane Lipscombe. Her graduate work focused on developing automated behavior methods for evoking and assessing pain behavior in rodents to better understand the role of voltage-gated calcium channels in the development of pain and hypersensitivity.
Remy joined the Wainger lab in January 2025 and is interested in continuing to study mechanisms of pain and potential therapeutics.
Andrea Salzinger, PhD
Post-doctoral Fellow
Andrea holds a BSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany and a MSc in Biochemistry, with a focus on Neuroscience, for which she studied at Technical University of Munich, Germany and Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, Netherlands.
She then completed her PhD at the UK Dementia Research Institute, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom under the guidance of Dr. Bhuvaneish T. Selvaraj and Prof. Siddharthan Chandran. Andrea investigated the role of TDP43 loss of function in neuromuscular junction degeneration in the context of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using a human 3D stem cell neuromuscular assembloid model.
Andrea joined the Wainger lab in May 2025 to continue investigating the molecular mechanism underlying selective neuronal vulnerability in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.
Susan E. St. Pierre, PhD
Research Manager
Susan received her BA in Human Biology (Neuroscience concentration) from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from the Program in Neuroscience at Harvard. Her thesis work, in the lab of Stefan Thor, centered on interplay of transcriptional regulation and cell-cell signaling in neuronal specification using the Drosophila model system. Following a postdoc with Kristin White at MGH studying cell death in the developing nervous system, she began working as a biocurator at FlyBase, the database of Drosophila genes and genomes, as a genome annotator and literature curator.
Susan joined the Wainger Lab in February of 2023 with an interest in translational research and has been working on the pain gene therapy project.
Research Assistants
Holden Korbey
Holden joined the Wainger lab in July 2025 after graduating from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor's in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Romani Osbourne
Romani joined the Wainger Lab in July 2025 after graduating from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry. In his free time, he enjoys baking and writing poetry.
Elizabeth Ding
Elizabeth joined the Wainger lab in March 2025 after graduating from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in Cell and Molecular Biology.
Isabel Flessas
Isabel joined the Wainger lab in July 2024 after graduating from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences and a minor in Psychology.
Chris Viets
Chris joined the Wainger Lab in August 2024 after graduating from MIT with bachelor's degrees in Biology and Physics.
Samantha Geis
Sam joined the Wainger Lab in July 2024 after graduating from Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Neurobiology & Behavior.
Laura Sams
Laura joined the Wainger Lab in August 2024 after graduating from the University of Chicago with bachelor's degrees in Cognitive Science and Biological Sciences with a specialization in Quantitative Biology.
Victoria Villarreal
Victoria joined the Wainger Lab in September 2024 after graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in Materials Science & Engineering.
Sophia Chen
Sophia joined the Wainger lab in September 2024 after graduating from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology.
Lab Alumni
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Hagai Marmor-Kollet, PhD
2023-2024 | aMoon Fund
Daniel Debreuil, PhD
2018-2021 | Sanofi
Joao Pereira, PhD
2015-2021 | University of Alabama, Birmingham - Faculty
Paloma Gonzalez-Perez, MD, PhD | Instructor
2018-2019 | Massachusetts General Hospital - Faculty
Haruhiko Banno, PhD
2017-2018 | Kyoto University - Associate Professor
Anna-Claire Devlin, PhD
2015-2017 | Queens University Belfast
Yechiam Sapir, PhD
2015 - 2017 | Surgical Monitoring Services (Israel)
Visiting Scholars
Joo Hyun Nam, Ph.D.
2022-2024 | Dongguk University College of Medicine - Faculty, Department of Physiology
Xiaofan Lai
2019-2020 | Sun Yat-Sen University - Faculty
Research Assistants
Advika Kumar
2024-2025 | MD Candidate - Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Pramith Senaratne
2023-2025 | MD Candidate - Sidney Kimmell Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University
Abegale McDermott
2024-2025 | MD Candidate - University of Washington School of Medicine
Lauren Sun
2022-2024 | MD Candidate - University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
Adina Mistry
2023-2024 | MD Candidate - Tufts University School of Medicine
Martha Yates
2022-2024 | PhD Candidate - London Interdisciplinary Biosciences Consortium, King’s College London
Sharon Powley
2022-2024 | PhD Candidate - Duke Neurobiology
Gracesenia Chahyadinata
2021-2023 | PhD Candidate - Harvard PhD Program in Neuroscience
Ashley Battenberg
2021-2022 | MD Candidate - Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine
Joon Sung
2020-2022 | UC Irvine
Michelle Adler
2020-2022 | MD/PhD Candidate - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Saini
Catherine Song
2021-2022 | Wildtype - Tissue Engineering
Katherine Dorfman
2019-2021 | MD/PhD Candidate - Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Brenda Chiang
2019-2020| MD Candidate - UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program
James Hawrot
2018-2020 | PhD Candidate - Brown University/NIH
Kevin Zhu
2017-2019 | MD Candidate - University of Michigan Medical School
Eugene Berezovski
2016-2019 | PhD Candidate - Uniformed Services University
Joan Koh
2016-2018 | MD Candidate - Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University
Jenny Shao
2016-2017 | MD Candidate - Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine
Dan Moakley
2014-2017 | PhD Candidate - Columbia University
Julian Gal
2015-2016 | MD Candidate - University of Rochester School of Medicine