Founded more than 40 years ago, the Rose F. Kennedy Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (RFK IDDRC) has long been at the forefront of research on brain development and function, while simultaneously providing clinical care for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs). It is also one of the oldest designated University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Research, Education and Service (UCEDD) and, as such, has intimate links to Einstein’s UCEDD clinical arm - the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center (CERC).
CERC provides clinicians and investigators with the challenge and opportunity of working with large numbers of IDD-related conditions in the genetically diverse and socioeconomically compromised population of the Bronx.
Demonstrating further integration within Einstein’s RFK IDDRC, the UCEDD is also home to the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) Program, one of only 38 in the United States, which supports interdisciplinary clinical training for medical and allied health professionals who care for individuals with special healthcare needs.
Highlights
Steven Walkley, DVM, PhD
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
“Lysosomal Disease at Half Century: A New Era Emerges”
January 23, 2015
John D. Wiley Conference Center
Dr. Steven Walkley, Einstein Professor of Neuroscience, Pathology and Neurology and Director of the Rose F. Kennedy Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, was chosen as the University of Wisconsin’s 2015 Harry Waisman Memorial Lecturer. Dr. Walkley’s talk, at the John D. Wiley Conference Center on January 23, 2015, entitled “Lysosomal Disease at Half Century: A New Era Emerges,” provided a historical overview of the challenges faced by researchers in the early years after discovery, of this group of devastating diseases. He then went on to highlight how recent discoveries and advances in medical research have led to an expanded understanding of the importance of the lysosomal system as well as to multiple therapeutic approaches, ranging from gene therapy, enzyme replacement, substrate reduction, the use of proteostasis regulators, etc.
3rd Annual Isabelle Rapin Conference on Communication Disorders: Rett Syndrome (Wednesday, December 10, 2014)
On a rainy Wednesday in early December, over 100 doctors and scientists crowded into the Price Center’s LeFrak Auditorium to hear keynote speakers Dr. Huda Zoghbi of the Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Michael Green of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Monica Coenraads, executive director of the Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT), along with faculty from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, present on many topics ranging from advances in translational research to novel therapeutic approaches related to some of the most common comorbidities specific to Rett Syndrome patients.