Amy Alessi, PhD

Dr. Alessi serves as the Program Director for the Collaborative Center for XDP. In this capacity she manages the Center’s research grant award program, a portfolio that includes over 110 projects totaling $40M+ at institutions across North America, Europe and Asia. Dr. Alessi acts as liaison between the center and funded scientists and manages administrative functions for the Center, including reporting to the advisory boards, planning consortium wide workshops, and engaging with contract organizations for large scale scientific initiatives. She served as Science Officer for the XDP Center from 2014-2019.

Dr. Alessi received an undergraduate degree in biology from The College of the Holy Cross and a PhD in neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her thesis work, in the laboratory of Dr. Stanley Froehner, focused on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and the neuromuscular junction. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship Harvard Medical School in the laboratory of Daniel Goodenough. PhD, studying the role of gap junctions in murine lens development. She returned to disease-focused research as a Research Assistant at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute analyzing the role of inflammation in a mouse model of Becker Muscular Dystrophy.