Scientific Advisory Committee
To better support our mission, Helping Hands for GAND established the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) in February 2019. The purpose of the SAC is to offer expertise on scientific developments, to provide insights on the needs of the GAND population, and to advise HHFG on policies, research grants, marketing, communications, and educational literature to pursue the highest standards of scientific rigor and accuracy.
Currently, the SAC includes:
Tyler Pierson, MD-PhD
Juan Young, PhD
Windy Kestay, PhD
Currently, the SAC includes:
Tyler Pierson, MD-PhD
Juan Young, PhD
Windy Kestay, PhD
Meet Our Scientific Advisory Committee Members
Tyler Pierson, MD-PhD
Clinical Pediatric Neurologist and Researcher at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Tyler Pierson, MD-PhD, did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Pierson then attended Baylor College of Medicine, where he received his MD and PhD degrees. His thesis involved inducible Gene Therapy. He did his Pediatrics’ training at Texas Children’s Hospital and his Pediatric Neurology training at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where he did laboratory research on Gene Therapy for Lysosomal Storage Disorders. After his residency, he joined the Neurogenetics Branch of NINDS at the National Institutes of Health for a Clinical Fellowship in Neurogenetics and then joined the newly developed NIH Undiagnosed Diseases Program. Both groups specialized in the study of rare neurogenetic disorders and utilized new genomics techniques to perform large-scale gene screens in undiagnosed patients.
After completing his training at NIH, Dr. Pierson moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he has been funded by the Cedars-Sinai Fashion Industries Guild Fellowships. Under their sponsorship he set up the Pediatrics Neurogenetics Clinic (PNC) and his laboratory in the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative medicine Institute. The PNC clinic focuses on children with undiagnosed or rare neurogenetic disorders, while the laboratory utilizes basic science research to better understand these disorders. He has worked with several disease-focused research groups including one investigating Gene and Cell Therapy for CLN6. Currently, his work focuses on neurodevelopmental disorders like GAND and others involving the NuRD Complex. This research involves the use of induced pluripotent stem cells to model these disorders in tissue culture with Cerebral Organoids.
After completing his training at NIH, Dr. Pierson moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he has been funded by the Cedars-Sinai Fashion Industries Guild Fellowships. Under their sponsorship he set up the Pediatrics Neurogenetics Clinic (PNC) and his laboratory in the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative medicine Institute. The PNC clinic focuses on children with undiagnosed or rare neurogenetic disorders, while the laboratory utilizes basic science research to better understand these disorders. He has worked with several disease-focused research groups including one investigating Gene and Cell Therapy for CLN6. Currently, his work focuses on neurodevelopmental disorders like GAND and others involving the NuRD Complex. This research involves the use of induced pluripotent stem cells to model these disorders in tissue culture with Cerebral Organoids.
Juan Young, PhD
Neurobiologist and Researcher at University of Miami
Juan Young, PhD, is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Miami in the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Department of Human Genetics and Director of the Division of Human Disease Modeling for the Center for Molecular Genetics at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics. Young is a neurobiologist interested in genetic diseases and epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation. His lab uses molecular techniques to understand the mechanisms underlying genetic disorders such as Rett Syndrome, Bohring-Opitz syndrome, GAND, Alzheimer disease and Cleft lip and palate, as well as neuroprotection against cerebral ischemia. He established mouse models of GAND in 2019 to study pathogenesis mechanisms associated with GATAD2B haploinsufficiency and delineate GATAD2B functions.
Windy Kestay, PhD
Planetary Scientist and GAND Parent
Dr. Windy (Jaeger) Kestay is a planetary scientist who has worked on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) High-Resolution Science Experiment (HiRISE) Science Team and as an affiliate with the Galileo Solid-State-Imaging (SSI) camera team. Her research on the geology of Mars, Jupiter’s moon Io, Earth, and Venus has been published in several journals, including Science. Windy’s oldest child has GAND caused by a de novo frameshift mutation within the GATAD2B gene. She has, for now, stepped away from planetary science to focus on parenting and to serve on the Science Advisory Committee for Helping Hands for GAND. Windy lives with her husband, Laszlo, who is also a planetary scientist, and their two children in Arizona.