About the speaker

Janssen M. Kotah is a neurobiologist with expertise in both wet and dry lab research. His academic career started in 2015, when he obtained a bachelor’s degree in psychology, summa cum laude, from the University of the Philippines Diliman. After being inspired to study the human brain in more detail, he moved to Europe to participate in the Erasmus Mundus Neurasmus joint master’s program, where he obtained his MSc in Medical Neurosciences at the Charité in Berlin, Germany, as well as MSc Research in Neurosciences at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

He then pursued a PhD at the University of Amsterdam at the group of Dr. Aniko Korosi and Prof. Dr. Paul Lucassen, where he used a mouse model to study the lasting effects of early-life stress exposure on the neuroimmune system and Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Since 2022, he has been doing his postdoc with Prof. Dr. Bart Eggen and Dr. Susanne Kooistra at the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, where he uses single cell and spatial transcriptomics techniques to study neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and multiple sclerosis.

Dr. Kotah is currently a Balik Scientist hosted by the UP Manila National Institutes of Health.