Rita Sattler, PhD, MSc

Dr. Sattler is Professor of Translational Neuroscience at the Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ. Dr. Sattler is the Director of the BNI Research Education Programs and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience at BNI-ASU.

She received her masters and doctorate degree from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada and performed her postdoctoral training in the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. She then served as the lead scientist for a small startup biotech company for 4 years overseeing assay development and drug screening of lead compounds for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), in addition to the validation of disease biomarkers. From there, Dr. Sattler joined the Johns Hopkins University Drug Discovery Center to strengthen her expertise in preclinical drug development. With this strong translational neuroscience background, Dr. Sattler started her first faculty position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology in 2012 at Johns Hopkins University, followed by her relocation to the Barrow Neurological Institute in 2015. Dr. Sattler’s research is focused on mechanisms of neurodegeneration in dementias, including Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), FTD with motor neuron dysfunction (FTD/ALS), Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body dementia using human disease models, including postmortem autopsy tissues and human patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) differentiated into neurons and glial cells. Dr. Sattler’s research is supported through numerous federal grants (Department of defense (DOD), National Institute of Health (NIH)) and awards from disease foundations and private donors, as well as the Barrow Neurological Foundation. She is a member of the American Society for Neuroscience and the American Society for Neurochemistry.