Get to know the Penn FTD Center staff! Learn more this month from Penn FTD Center Clinical Research Coordinator Riya Chaturvedi in the responses below! What is your role at the Penn FTD Center and how long have you been working at the center? I’ve been working as a Clinical Trials Coordinator at the Penn FTD Center for the past year. What inspiration/joy do you find within the role? This experience has reinforced my passion for patient-centered clinical research. I will alway

The Penn FTD Center is currently hosting a group of interns and trainees for the summer of 2026. Some individuals participated in the Summer Training in Aging Research (STAR) program while others shadowed Penn FTD Center Co-Directors and Postdoctoral Fellows to gain experience working in an academic research lab. The summer interns and trainees shared their backgrounds and reflected on their experiences with the Penn FTD Center. Read below to learn more about the interns and

Our Assistant Director Dahlia Kamel serves as the Chair Elect for the Society of Penn Clinical Research Professionals, and was invited to give the keynote speech for the 2026 Clinical Research Expertise and Advancement Through Excellence Awards, here at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She was incredibly excited to be given a platform to express to the Penn community why clinical research professionals are the invisible infrastructure of innovation

After thirty-eight years as business and life partners, Susan Koen and her partner, Barbara, navigated the journey of Barbara’s frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis for four years. In the face of an unimaginable change to their everyday life, Barbara and Susan made the decision to enter a gene replacement clinical trial together at the Penn FTD Center in order to contribute to the fight for a cure for GRN-FTD. In her new book, Dancing In The Face of Death, Susan Koen detai

Get to know the Penn FTD Center staff! Learn more this month from Penn FTD Center Carmen Gonzalez-Recober in the responses below! What is your role at the Penn FTD Center and how long have you been working at the center? I have been working at the FTD Center since June 2021. My path at the center began as an intern for the speech focused team, due to my experience in college with language research, and I soon became a clinical research coordinator for them. I later transferre