Isabel is a medical student at UMass Chan interested in the molecular basis of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. She received her B.A. from Amherst College in 2022 where she majored in Neuroscience and English. Her interest in neurodevelopmental disorders emerged at Amherst in Dr. Sally Kim’s lab, where she studied autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and completed a senior thesis project titled Investigating the Role of Zyxin in Synaptogenesis. She went on to spend two years as a postgraduate associate at Yale University in Dr. Kristen Brennand’s lab, where she worked to characterize the phenotype of rare and highly penetrant mutations associated with ASD using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in multiple central nervous system cell types derived from stem cells. Isabel joined the Lodato Lab in Spring 2025, where she is excited to study the genetic and molecular underpinnings of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) toward identifying potential pathogenic pathways that can be leveraged to better care for patients impacted by this disease.