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New York – Melissa Alldred, PhD began her career at NKI in 2005 as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Stephen Ginsberg’s lab. She now holds the joint titles of Research Scientist in the Center for Dementia Research at NKI and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. Melissa’s banner year saw four first author papers accepted for publication along with two collaborative publications. Melissa’s first 2021 publication, co-authored with the CDR’s Drs. Stephen Ginsberg and Panos Roussos and others, titled, “Profiling Basal Forebrain Cholinergic Neurons Reveals a Molecular Basis for Vulnerability Within the Ts65Dn Model of Down Syndrome and Alzheimer’s Disease,” appears in Molecular Neurobiology. This is her first RNA sequencing publication, which led to publishing in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. On another research front, Melissa was recruited by Dr. Lotta Granholm to collaboratively guest edit a special issue on Down Syndrome and Aging for the Journal of Clinical Medicine. Melissa’s own original research contributed to this special issue.  As if that were not enough, Melissa also contributed to two publications by co-CDR members: Dr. Pasquale D’Acunzo’s publication from Dr. Efrat Levy’s lab in Science Advances (“Mitovesicles are a novel population of extracellular vesicles of mitochondrial origin altered in Down syndrome”); and from Dr. Paul Mathews’ lab, Mariah Novy’s accepted publication in Neurobiology of Aging (“Expression and proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein in the brain is unaltered by apolipoprotein E genotype”).