Jeff Jones, Ph.D. has been passionate about aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) since his undergraduate years at the University of South Florida, where he published on a natural compound that modulates tau aggregation under the mentorship of Dr. Chad Dickey. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the lab of Dr. Su-Chun Zhang, where he modeled Alexander disease using human iPSC-derived astrocytes and CRISPR/Cas9-edited isogenic controls, uncovering functional rules of the GFAP protein. His graduate work earned him a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute with Dr. Fred Gage, Jeff contributed to multiple high-impact studies, including the development of Repair-seq to map genome repair in neurons (Science, 2021) and the discovery of impaired hippocampal glucose metabolism affecting cognition (Science, 2024). He also pioneered work using directly induced neurons (iNs) from AD patient fibroblasts to uncover age- and AD-associated epigenetic drift (BioRxiv, 2024) and ribonucleotide accumulation in genomic DNA. This work earned him a competitive NIH K99/R00 award.
The Jones Lab will focus on neurogenomics and age-related metabolic changes in neurons, with an emphasis on their role in sporadic AD.
Outside the lab, Jeff enjoys DIY electronics, home automation, the maker movement, and anything at the intersection of electronics, programming, and data science, including homelabs and self-hosting. Jeff also enjoys cooking and is an avid music lover.