Ryan Prestil

Ryan Prestil earned a B.S. with Honors in Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2016, where he majored in Neurobiology and Mathematics. In 2013, Ryan joined the lab of Prof. Krishanu Saha in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow. Over the next three years, he worked to understand the role of the physical environment in stem cell differentiation and reprogramming, and he developed biomaterial platforms to improve CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing workflows. In recognition for his work, Ryan was awarded the Hilldale Research Fellowship in 2014. Ryan also worked in the lab of Dr. Detlev Arendt at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory during the summer of 2015, funded by a Promega International Internship Scholarship and a Phi Kappa Phi Study Abroad Grant. In the lab, Ryan investigated the role of key neurodevelopmental genes in the Platynereis dumerilii annelid model in order to better understand the evolutionary origins of the central nervous system. 

As an OxCam scholar jointly funded by the NIH and the Cambridge International Trust, Ryan will develop human stem cell models of neural tissue in order to study the molecular mechanisms underpinning the onset and progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Many of these diseases share common pathological features, including aberrant protein aggregation, impaired RNA metabolism, and dysfunctional mitochondrial quality control. However, it remains unknown which molecular and genetic pathways link these phenotypes and how different cell types interact to yield tissue-specific neuronal death.