Hemali Phatnani earned her PhD from Duke University and did her postdoctoral studies at Harvard and Columbia. She was jointly appointed at Columbia University, as Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences, and at the New York Genome Center, where she directs the Center for Genomics of Neurodegenerative Disease. Her research program spans both institutions and has three main goals: 1) To serve as the hub of collaborative interactions between clinicians, computational biologists, and basic scientists; 2) To build and disseminate tools and resources for the neurodegenerative disease research community; and 3) To understand the role of intercellular interactions in neurodegenerative disease.