Prof. Vijay Kumar is a distinguished faculty member and researcher specializing in Structural biology, Protein chemistry and neurosciences. He holds the position of Professor of the Department of Biotechnology, Anand School of Engineering and Technology, Sharda University, Agra. Prof. Kumar is internationally recognized and ranks among the top 2% of most cited scientists according to the STANFORD list. He earned his PhD in Biophysics from AIIMS, New Delhi, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UMass Medical School, focusing on folding and aggregation of proteins such as SOD1 and TDP-43 implicated in motor neuron disease, ALS, and FTD. He also served as Principal Investigator under the DST-SERB Young Scientist Scheme at Jamia Millia Islamia. His current research focuses on protein folding, misfolding, and aggregation, and the role of toxic RNA species in neurodegenerative diseases. He is a member of the Protein Society, Indian Biophysical Society, Indian Academy of Neurosciences, and the International Society for Neurochemistry. He has held fellowships from CSIR, India and a DAAD fellowship in Germany. Manoj Kumar Jaiswal, Ph.D., has been non-tenure track faculty (Instructor) in the Department of Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY, since 2017. He obtained PhD degree at the Georg-August University, Goettingen, Germany, and postdoctoral training at MIT, Cambridge, MA and CNRM, Bethesda, MD. More recently, Dr. Jaiswal is a Research Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center in NY. His current research focuses on studies related to neurodegeneration in ALS, motor neuron disease, brain Injury, and psychiatric disorders. He is a recipient of an NIH Career Development Award and was appointed as a Career Development Fellow and later a Senior Research Fellow at the CNRM in Bethesda, MD where he studied molecular mechanisms of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) using 2-photon in-vivo imaging and 3-D microscopy. Dr. Jaiswal, has received numerous honors and awards, including scholarships and poster awards, and was invited to present lectures and seminars. He is a member of Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the National Neurotrauma Society (NNS). He has been the Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Health/DoD: Pilot Project entitled: “Balance between inhibition and excitation and the vascular trauma in sensory barrel cortex after TBI: in-vivo imaging approach. He is a reviewer and editor for many journals, including Scientific Reports, Annals of Neurology and Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. He has authored numerous articles, book and book chapters on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Motor Neuron Disease and Psychiatric Disorders.
