Lab Members

Steven Lubbe, PhD, joined the Ken & Ruth Davee Department of Neurology as an assistant professor of Neurology and Genetic Medicine in April 2016. Originally from South Africa, he completed his PhD in Cancer Genetics in 2011 at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, where he focused on identifying and characterizing colorectal cancer risk variants in large-scale genetics cohorts. He joined the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at University College London as a postdoctoral researcher and switched his research focus to investigating the genetics of Parkinson’s disease and other complex movement disorders. Lubbe’s research continues to interrogate large-scale genomics and other -omics datasets through various complex bioinformatics approaches to elucidate the genetic architecture of Parkinson’s and aims to identify novel genes linked to Parkinson’s, dystonia and other movement disorders. Additionally, his laboratory researches the shared genetic link between Parkinson’s, malignant melanoma and pigmentation. He is the analytics lead for the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center Biorepository, where he facilitated its recent expansion and helped oversee its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lubbe coordinates the NextGeneration NeuroGeneticists (NG2) Summer Undergraduate Research Grant Program at the Simpson Querrey Center for Neurogenetics, serves on the board of advisors for the NUgene Project, is an active member of the International Parkinson’s Disease Genomics Consortium (IPDGC) and is a principal investigator for the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (GP2).

Bernabe Bustos obtained a PhD in molecular biosciences from Universidad Andres Bello, Chile. Bustos' research focuses on the understanding of the genetic basis of complex diseases in diverse populations. During his training, he acquired bioinformatic skills in order to analyze large data coming from next-generation sequencing, such as whole-genome, exome and transcriptome, to which he has applied regression-based predictive models to attempt to reveal novel genetic risk factors. Among Bernabe’s projects, he is currently studying the role of ultra-rare variants in Parkinson’s disease, the role of short-tandem repetitions at a genome-wide level in Parkinson’s, how epistasis contributes to Parkinson’s disease risk in genome-wide association study populations and the genetic overlap between cutaneous malignant melanoma and Parkinson’s.