Affiliation: Columbia University, Department of Pathology and Cell Biology

James E. Goldman received his MD and PhD (neurobiology) from New York University School of Medicine and residency training in Neuropathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he remained for several years before moving to the Department of Pathology at Columbia University, where he has worked for the last 30 years. He was Director of the Neuropathology service at Columbia for 25 years, and is still Director of the Neuropathology Residency Training Program. His clinical duties include diagnosis of neurosurgical specimens and autopsy brains. His laboratory work has focused on cellular and molecular studies of central nervous system (CNS) glia - astrocytes and oligodendrocytes - investigating their development and the changes they undergo in neurological diseases.  He has served on NIH Study Sections, on the editorial boards of many neuroscience and neuropathology journals and published many papers on the features of glial cells.  He has mentored many PhD and MD/PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, neuropathology trainees, and young faculty members.  Recently he has collaborated with Dr. Osama Al Dalahmah in their ongoing studies of how CNS cells change their patterns of gene expression in neurological diseases using a new technique called single nuclei RNA sequencing, in which gene expression in single cell nuclei isolated from fresh frozen brain tissues can be examined.  Dr. Al Dalahmah and he have found many changes in neurons and glia in the inherited, neurodegenerative disorder, Huntington Disease, and are embarking on studies of brains of patients with Parkinson Disease.