Dr. Gao is currently Professor and the Governor Paul Cellucci Chair in Neuroscience Research, and the Founding Director of Frontotemporal Dementia Research Center at the RNA Therapeutics Institute, UMass Chan Medical School. He received his PhD degree from Duke University and did postdoctoral trainings at the University College London (UCL) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He started his own lab at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at UCSF in 2000 and moved to UMass Chan in 2010. Dr. Gao received a Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award from the McKnight Foundation. He was also a Sloan Research Fellow in Neuroscience and a Klingenstein Fellow in Neuroscience.