Dr. Steven Sloan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Genetics, at the Emory University School of Medicine. He was born in Phoenix, Arizona and spent the latter half of his childhood in South Florida. For his undergraduate degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Biochemistry he attended the University of Miami, FL.

 

Steven received his MD and PhD degrees at Stanford University in the laboratory of Ben Barres, where he became fascinated with glia--the understudied and mysterious cell types that adjoin neurons within the nervous system. Given his interests in human medicine, Steven spent his PhD investigating the functions of human astrocytes. Along with his colleagues, he developed techniques to purify and profile each of the major CNS cell types from the rodent and human brain and created resources to distribute this information so that it could be utilized by the entire neuroscience community. 

 

Recognizing that studying human glia from primary tissue had inherent limitations, Steven completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Sergiu Pasca at Stanford to develop a human induced pluripotent stem cell 3D model of cortical development called human cortical spheroids (hCS). This is an ideal system for interrogating human cortical development and specifically glial development in both healthy and diseased states. Steven joined the Emory faculty in the fall of 2018, where his lab studies glial development and the role these cells play in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disease.

 

In his free time, Steven can be found training for triathlons and spending time outdoors and with his family (including the lab's first two members, canines Kevin and Ben).