Project Highlights
Contributions
Here is an overview of how this team’s article findings have contributed to the PD field as of June 2025. There are two different categorizations of these contributions – one by impact to the PD community and a second by scientific category.
Stay tuned—this is where the team’s scientific contributions will be shared.
Accolades
Members of the team have been recognized for their contributions.
Open Science Champions
Maite Azcorra, Zachary Gaertner
Awards
Network Spotlights
In the News
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Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s and The Michael J. Fox Foundation Expand Global Research Initiative with $261M Investment Toward Personalized Treatments
04/28/2026 — Today, Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP), in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), announced $261 million in new grant funding for the Collaborative Research Network (CRN) to map the biological blueprint of Parkinson’s disease and build a standardized toolkit of global research resources that are needed to turn discoveries into treatments.
Dopamine Is a Lot More Than Just the ‘Happy Chemical’
09/20/2023 — Popular Science reports on a recent discovery that found a relationship between neuron type and dopamine function, and one type of dopamine neuron has an unexpected function that will likely reshape how scientists, clinicians and the public understand this neurotransmitter.
Dopamine Neurons May Be More Diverse Than Thought
08/10/2023 — Parkinson’s News Today discusses a cellular study of mice by Team Awatramani that found that a specific subset of dopamine-producing nerve cells in the brain appear to respond to movement acceleration and correspond with the region where cell death is particularly pronounced in PD.
2 Northwestern Researchers Awarded $17.9M in ASAP Grants
11/08/2021 — Read about how ASAP teams Awatramani and Surmeier are studying alterations in the brain that contribute to the development of Parkinson’s disease.
