Director, Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank

Job Description

The Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank, one of the nation’s longest continuously operating human brain repositories, is seeking a dynamic and visionary Director to lead its next phase of growth and innovation. The NIH-funded Neurobiobank is currently housed at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, NY, and has been established for over four decades as a critical national resource for advancing understanding of the neurobiology of psychiatric, neurodegenerative, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The Neurobiobank houses more than 2,600 clinically and neuropathologically characterized human brain donors. Donors are recruited through longstanding partnerships with regional hospital systems, community outreach programs, and a unique satellite initiative in Puerto Rico. Each donation is accompanied by extensive clinical, neuropsychological, and neuropathological data that support high-impact scientific discovery across the neuroscience community.

Requests for specimens and data are received through the NIH Neurobiobank web portal and are evaluated for scientific merit, rigor, and feasibility. Specimens, including fixed, frozen, and fresh brain tissues, are dissected, catalogued, and distributed to investigators worldwide. The Mount Sinai site contributes substantially to the NIH Neurobiobank consortium’s mission to ensure that high-quality, well-characterized human brain tissue is available to qualified researchers studying brain disorders.

Position Summary

The Director will oversee all aspects of Neurobiobank operations and strategic development. This includes scientific leadership, operational management, and external engagement to enhance visibility and impact. The successful candidate will work closely with NIH program staff, Mount Sinai leadership, and collaborating institutions to ensure that the Neurobiobank remains at the forefront of human postmortem brain research.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide overall scientific and administrative leadership for the Neurobiobank and its 15+ professional staff.
• Oversee donor recruitment, consent, and clinical / psychological phenotyping in collaboration with medical, community, and research partners.
• Supervise tissue procurement, dissection, neuropathological characterization, and quality control processes.
• Maintain state-of-the-art infrastructure, including digital neuropathology, ex vivo MRI, and biorepository informatics systems.
• Serve as primary liaison to NIH program officers and the NIH Neurobiobank consortium.
• Engage with external investigators and advise on tissue selection, best practices, and experimental design to maximize scientific rigor.
• Foster collaborative research relationships across Mount Sinai, the VA, and national / international institutions.
• Ensure regulatory compliance and ethical oversight consistent with NIH, institutional, and federal standards.
• Drive innovation by implementing new technologies and methodologies for brain banking, imaging, and data integration.

Qualifications

Application

Interested candidates should send a CV and a brief statement of interest to Shema Patel at shema.patel@mssm.edu