Gist Croft, PhD, is a Senior Research Investigator at the NYSCF Research Institute, where he leads the Parkinson’s disease program. He is an expert in using stem cells to understand human neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative disease, with an emphasis on quantitative, image-based phenotyping. As a PhD student at Columbia University, he helped develop and use the first human stem cell models of ALS. In postdoctoral work at The Rockefeller University, he defined a new system to study early human embryology and led a team that created and used an isogenic stem cell panel to uncover a previously unknown function for the Huntingtin gene, and a novel disease manifestation in early neurodevelopment. At NYSCF, Dr. Croft is working to recreate Parkinson’s disease in a dish to uncover disease drivers and mechanisms, with a focus on glial cells and neuroinflammation.