Assistant Professor, Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Dr. Tim Ahfeldt trained as a stem cell biologist. He joined the Neuroscience and Neurology Departments at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2017 as an Assistant Professor. Before becoming a scientist, he earned a B.A. in public administration and judicature at the FHVR in Berlin in 2000 and worked as a detective in Berlin’s police force investigating crimes. His thesis work for his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology granted by the University of Hamburg in 2010 was done at Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Dr. Chad Cowan’s lab. He has been involved in expanding the repertoire of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) technology since 2006, a time of rapid advancement of the field. His pioneering work includes developing methods to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and induced differentiated cell types likes white and brown adipocytes. During his postdoctoral work in Dr. Lee Rubin’s lab at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute he applied genome editing technologies to generate isogenic models of early-onset autosomal recessive forms of Parkinson’s Disease (PD). His laboratory carries out translational research using these models of PD to investigate pathological mechanisms of PD mutations in differentiated midbrain dopaminergic neurons with a focus on integrating genotype, phenotype and global dysregulation of transcripts and proteins. Dr. Ahfeldt is always interested in new technologies and methods to extend his scientific toolkit to investigate old questions in new ways. Dr. Ahfeldt lives with his wife, who is also a researcher at Mount Sinai, and their two sons, in Westchester, NY. Besides research he enjoys PC gaming, gardening, food preparation and subsequent consumption, and he is an audio-bibliophile always excited to get a good recommendation. Send him one at tim.ahfeldt@mssm.edu.