Director, Mount Sinai NIH Neurobiobank

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

• PhD, MD, or MD/PhD in neuroscience, neuropathology, psychiatry, or a related biomedical field.
• Demonstrated expertise in human postmortem brain research, neuropathology, or neurodegenerative/psychiatric disease biology.
• Proven leadership and administrative experience managing complex research operations or large teams.
• Strong record of scientific productivity and grant funding.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to engage diverse stakeholders including donors, families, and scientific collaborators.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with 48,000 employees working across seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, more than 600 research and clinical labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time—discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.

Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 9,000 primary and specialty care physicians and 10 free-standing joint-venture centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida. Hospitals within the System are consistently ranked by Newsweek’s® “The World’s Best Smart Hospitals, Best in State Hospitals, World Best Hospitals and Best Specialty Hospitals” and by U.S. News & World Report's® “Best Hospitals” and “Best Children’s Hospitals.” The Mount Sinai Hospital is on the U.S. News & World Report® “Best Hospitals” Honor Roll for 2025-2026. 

About the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is internationally renowned for its outstanding research, educational, and clinical care programs. It is the sole academic partner for the seven member hospitals of the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest academic health systems in the United States, providing care to New York City’s large and diverse patient population. 

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai offers highly competitive MD, PhD, MD-PhD, and master’s degree programs, with enrollment of more than 1,200 students. It has the largest graduate medical education program in the country, with more than 2,700 clinical residents and fellows training throughout the Health System. Its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences offers 13 degree-granting programs, conducts innovative basic and translational research, and trains more than 560 postdoctoral research fellows.

Ranked 11th nationwide in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is among the 99th percentile in research dollars per investigator according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.  More than 4,500 scientists, educators, and clinicians work within and across dozens of academic departments and multidisciplinary institutes with an emphasis on translational research and therapeutics. Through Mount Sinai Innovation Partners (MSIP), the Health System facilitates the real-world application and commercialization of medical breakthroughs made at Mount Sinai.

Application

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