A message from Drs. Jennifer Bizon, Steven DeKosky and Gordon Mitchell
Dear Colleagues,
Please join us in congratulating Jada Lewis, Ph.D., on her new role as department chair of physiological sciences in the UF College of Veterinary Medicine and thanking her for her five years of leadership and dedication as a deputy director of the MBI.
Even before she became a deputy director, Dr. Lewis helped guide the MBI for many of her 14 years at UF, including as co-leader of the Education and Outreach Committee and as a member of the MBI Executive Committee. Now, after a national search, she has been selected to bring her leadership skills and research expertise to Vet Med.
A professor of neuroscience, Dr. Lewis came to UF in 2010 from Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, where she did a postdoc in neuroscience following her first postdoc, in pharmacology, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Since then, Dr. Lewis has developed an expertise in the root causes of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s, frontotemporal dementia, and ALS. Among her many accomplishments thus far, she has created two mouse models of pathogenic tau that are now used in labs across the world.
Dr. Lewis is funded by the NIH and Florida Department of Health, and she has authored over 85 peer-reviewed publications. In addition, she co-founded and leads the Alzheimer’s Association-sponsored Southeastern Neurodegenerative Disease Conference, which brings together top researchers from UF, Emory, the University of Miami, Mayo Clinic-Jacksonville, and other institutions.
We wish Dr. Lewis all the best in her new role, and we look forward to many future collaborations.
Jennifer Bizon, Ph.D.
Director, Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute
Steven T. DeKosky, M.D.
Deputy Director, Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute
Gordon Mitchell, Ph.D.
Deputy Director, Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute