Dr. Michael Henderson leads the Henderson Neurodegenerative Disease Lab at Van Andel Institute. His research focuses on understanding the pathological progression of Parkinson’s disease using cell and animal models in which the pathologies of disease can be recapitulated. Dr. Henderson received his PhD in neuroscience from Yale University, where he studied how neuronal synapses are properly maintained over time, and he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, where he used misfolded protein seeding models to understand the impact of genetic risk factors on the progression of pathology.