Rusty Gage

Rusty Gage, PhD, is a Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, leading the Laboratory of Genetics. He holds the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease. His work focuses on neurogenesis, neuronal plasticity, and genomic diversity, particularly in the context of Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s disease. Gage’s team models diseases using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and brain organoids, pioneering studies on human brain evolution through comparative primate research. His lab has received $19.2 million from the American Heart Association-Allen Initiative to study aging brain mechanisms.

Education: BS in Biology from the University of Florida, MS and PhD in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University.

Research interests include:

• Adult neurogenesis and environmental influences
• Stem cell differentiation and disease modeling
• Genomic mosaicism via mobile DNA elements
• Age-related neurodegeneration mechanisms

Key achievements:

• Discovered adult human neurogenesis
• Showed exercise enhances neurogenesis
• Developed iPS-based models for psychiatric/neurological disorders

Grants and awards: Over 20 prestigious honors including the Taylor International Prize in Medicine (2024) and leadership roles in major scientific societies.

Labs/Teams: Directs the Gage Lab, collaborating globally on projects like the Brain Somatic Mosaicism Network and Allen Initiative for Brain Science.