Kiskinis to study ALS, epilepsy with $1.5M early career award

SQI faculty member Evangelos Kiskinis has received a Robertson Stem Cell Investigator Award from the New York Stem Cell Foundation. The early career investigator award will provide $1.5 million over five years to the Kiskinis laboratory to study the mechanisms that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and pediatric epilepsy.

Kiskinis is an assistant professor of neurology and physiology at Northwestern, and a member of Northwestern Medicine’s Les Turner ALS Center.

“I am delighted and deeply honored to receive this award,” Kiskinis said in a Feinberg School of Medicine press release. “I am grateful to all the people in my lab that have been working very hard these last four years, as well as to a number of collaborators across different disciplines including Al George and Samuel Stupp. I am also grateful to the Les Turner ALS Foundation that has provided crucial seed funding to my lab the past few years.”

Kiskinis said the five-year award will allow his group to focus on long-term projects while also providing the flexibility to pursue new high-risk, high-reward research.