Ed Lein leads the Brain Health accelerator’s research and global collaboration efforts aimed at advancing foundational insights into the human brain and neurodegenerative disease. Prior to this, Ed led the Human Cell Types Department in the Brain Science accelerator.  His research has aimed to create comprehensive cell atlases of the human and non-human primate brain, understand what is disrupted in Alzheimer’s disease, and create tools for precision genetic targeting of brain cell types as transformative tools for basic neuroscience and gene therapy. This work is now expanding to encompass a much wider range of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and ALS, combining large-scale discovery science, AI and disease modeling, and development of cell- and circuit-based genetic therapies. Ed’s areas of expertise include developmental neurobiology, structural and cellular neuroanatomy, transcriptomics and epigenomics, comparative neurobiology, and Alzheimer’s disease. He is a member of the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN), a member of the organizing committee of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), and a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) fellow. Ed is also an affiliate professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery and Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (DLMP) at the University of Washington in Seattle. He received a BS in Biochemistry from Purdue University, a PhD in Neurobiology from UC Berkeley, and performed postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Since joining the Allen Institute in 2004, Ed has provided scientific leadership for the creation of large-scale anatomical, cellular and gene expression atlases of the adult and developing mammalian brain as catalytic community resources, including the inaugural Allen Mouse Brain Atlas and a range of developmental and adult human and non-human primate brain atlases.

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