Affiliation: Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), Vienna, Austria

Sofia Grade is a biologist and group leader at the IMBA in Vienna. She obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Coimbra and the Laval University in Québec. Her PhD research has focused on the neural stem cell response to brain disease, including stroke and demyelination. She studied stem cell differentiation and neuroblast migration, utilizing in vivo and in vitro models of these neurological conditions. During her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Magdalena Götz, at the LMU Munich, she worked in cell transplantation for cell replacement in brain disease. She addressed a fundamental question in stem cell therapy – whether transplanted neurons can integrate into complex brain networks. Additionally, she contributed to advances in our understanding of stem cell niche regulation and myelin replacement. In 2020 she started her own lab that seeks to understand neural circuit remodeling in disease and to exploit intervention strategies for brain repair.