“Untangling the Pathophysiology of Genetic
Cortical Disorders at the Cellular Level”

Jeffrey Russ, MD, PhD
George W. Brumley, Jr, MD Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Director, Duke Neurological Intensive Care Nursery (NICN)
Division of Neurology | Fetal & Neonatal Neurology
Duke University School of Medicine

Dr. Russ is a fetal/neonatal neurologist and developmental neuroscientist in the Departments of Pediatrics and Neurology at Duke. He completed his B.A. in Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. He then pursued an MD-PhD through the Weill Cornell/Sloan Kettering/Rockefeller University MD-PhD Program where he graduated with joint degrees in 2016. Dr. Russ received his PhD in Neuroscience, studying under the mentorship of Dr. Julia Kaltschmidt where he studied how transcription factors control the identity of developing spinal interneurons, as well as how spinal inhibitory synapses respond to perinatal stroke. His research in early neurodevelopment led Dr. Russ to pursue clinical training in Child Neurology at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he undertook additional elective training in neonatal neurology. Following residency, Dr. Russ was awarded the Child Neurologist Career Development Program (CNCDP) K12 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which supported his transition to a junior faculty position at Duke and mentored research in the lab of Dr. Josh Huang in the Duke Department of Neurobiology. In Dr. Huang’s lab, Dr. Russ gained experience using cutting-edge neuroscientific tools to study the genetics and cell development that guide formation of the cerebral cortex. Now Dr. Russ aims to combine his clinical and scientific training to study the detailed molecular and cellular pathophysiology in the cortex in perinatal brain injury and genetic neurodevelopmental disorders.