MISSION
Tremor is the most common movement disorders and many patients with tremor continue to live with tremor-related disability. Despite the current technology has created an opportunity for new diagnostic approaches, surgical procedures, and pharmacologic innovations, which hold promise for treatment of tremor, the development of new therapy for tremor is still slow. One of the major obstacles for new therapy development is the lack of a platform for academic researchers, pharmaceutical industries, and funders to unify the research efforts specifically for tremor.
To overcome this problem, Drs. Sheng-Han Kuo, Phyllis Faust and Nora Vanegas at Columbia University, Drs. Elan D. Louis at Yale University, Ming-Kai Pan at National Taiwan University come up with the idea to have the 1st International Tremor Congress to promote the collaboration between tremor researchers and between academia and industry. In addition, we want to inspire the next-generation neurologists and neuroscientists to involve in the field of tremor research.
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
SHENG-HAN KUO, M.D.
Dr. Kuo is a physician-scientist focusing on research of cerebellar diseases and Parkinson's disease. He has investigated the cerebellar changes in the post-mortem tissues of patients with essential tremor, and is involved in the natural history study and clinical trials of spinocerebellar ataxias. He has published articles in Neurology, Movement Disorders, and the Journal of Neuroscience. Dr. Kuo is a recipient of the American Academy of Neurology Research Fellowship Award and the Parkinson's Disease Foundation Lucien Côté Early Investigator Award in Clinical Genetics.
Ming-Kai Pan, M.D., Ph.D
Dr. Pan's scholarly interest lies in the study of brain circuitry of movements. In particular, he focuses on two important brain regions for movement initiation and coordination: basal ganglia and cerebellum. In particular, his lab has discovered the burst firing of subthalamic nucleus is responsible for the slow movements in the animal models for Parkinson’s disease due to the unique distribution of the glutamatergic receptors in the subthalamic neurons. He also confirmed that human Parkinson’s disease patients also have similar receptor distributions, providing evidence that burst firing of subthalamic nucleus is important physiological signature for Parkinson’s disease.
ELAN D. LOUIS, M.D., M.S.
Elan D. Louis, M.D., M.S., leads the Movement Disorders Section at Yale Medicine and specializes in disorders of involuntary movement. With a particular interest in essential tremor (ET), one of the most common neurological disorders, he is the founder of the Essential Tremor Centralized Brain Repository, a national centralized brain bank for the study of ET.
Phyllis L. Faust, M.D., Ph.D.
Phyllis L. Faust, M.D., M.S., is a neuropathologist at Columbia Medical Center and specializes in neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular interest in cerebellar pathology. She is also an active member of ICAT (Initiative for Columbia Ataxia and Tremor) at Columbia University Medical Center.
Nora Venegas, M.D.
Nora Venegas, M.D., M.S., is a neurologist who specializes in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and the treatment of movement disorders including Parkinson's Disease, dystonia and essential tremor. She is also a clinical investigator whose research involves clinical and translational areas of movement disorders, specifically the use of diffusion tensor imaging for the understanding of deep brain stimulation, patterns of visual exploration in patients with Parkinson disease and physiology of the basal ganglia.