Frank Soldner, MD

Frank Soldner, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Genetics and a member of the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He received his MD from the University of Tübingen in Germany. For his thesis under the guidance of Dr. Jörg Schulz, he investigated the molecular mechanism of cellular death in dopaminergic neurons as a model for Parkinson’s disease. In his postdoctoral research with Dr. Ron McKay at NINDS/NIH and Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute at MIT, he established novel human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-based experimental paradigms to dissect the genetic basis of Parkinson’s disease. Currently, his lab employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating population genetics and genome-scale epigenetic data combined with hPSC and gene editing technologies to investigate how the complex interaction of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors contributes to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders.