Alice Chen-Plotkin is a neuroscientist and neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate and English literature major at Harvard University, Chen-Plotkin began her scientific training as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. She subsequently returned to Harvard for medical school and neurology training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Since 2010, Chen-Plotkin has been an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A physician-scientist, she runs a research group studying neurodegeneration and sees patients with neurodegenerative disorders.

Her laboratory specializes in using unbiased approaches permitted by modern technology to generate leads in the investigation of neurodegenerative disorders, then following these leads downstream in mechanistic cell and molecular biological experiments. Recently, she has used this unbiased approach to tackle the problem of developing novel biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Her PD biomarker research program is one of nine projects comprising the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Parkinson’s Disease Biomarker Program (PDBP), a UO1-funded 5-year effort to facilitate the development of PD biomarkers. She also currently chairs the PDBP national steering committee. Alice Chen-Plotkin has been the recipient of a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists, a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinician Scientist Development Award, and the American Academy of Neurology Jon Stolk Award in Movement Disorders. She is married to the Professor of Biology (University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences) Joshua Plotkin, and they have a son and a daughter. OPDC/DPAG