Gowoon
Son

Dr. Gowoon Son is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic whose research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying selective neuronal vulnerability and sleep dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related tauopathies. Through doctoral and postdoctoral training at DGIST (Korea), Maastricht University (the Netherlands), UCSF (USA), and Mayo Clinic (USA), she developed expertise in neuropathology, neuroanatomy, quantitative histology, and spatial omics technologies. Her work integrates human postmortem brain tissue curation and quality control, quantitative neuropathology, and high-throughput spatial transcriptomic and proteomic approaches to identify cellular and molecular determinants of neuronal resilience and degeneration. She has demonstrated differential vulnerability of hypothalamic and other neuromodulatory subcortical nuclei to AD pathology, uncovering mechanistic links among neuronal loss, early AD pathogenesis, and the cellular and molecular microenvironment that maintains neuronal homeostasis before neurons enter a vicious cycle of pathological change and neurodegeneration. Her research further examines how these processes contribute to sleep and circadian dysfunction during disease progression. Her long-term goal is to establish an independent research program that develops mechanistically informed strategies to advance precision diagnosis and symptom-targeted therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.