Sonia Vallabh

Senior Group Leader, Broad Institute

Dr. Sonia Vallabh co-runs a prion research laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard along with her husband, Eric Minikel. She earned her PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences from Harvard Medical School in 2019. Sonia and Eric left their previous careers to devote their lives to biomedical research after learning in 2011 that Sonia had inherited from her mother a mutation that causes genetic prion disease, a rapidly progressive and fatal dementia for which there is currently no treatment. Alongside drug discovery, Sonia is working toward new models to enable drugs to be tested for their ability to prevent or delay, as well as treat, neurodegenerative disease.