Dr. Coufal is a physician-scientist interested in the intersection between neuroimmunology, pediatric neurocritical care, neurodevelopment and aging. She completed her MD-PhD at the University of California, San Diego in medicine and in neuroscience, undertaking her doctoral work in the lab of Rusty Gage at the Salk Institute investigating the contribution of somatic mosaicism to normal brain development and pathological dysregulation of these pathways occurs in the setting of neurodevelopmental disorders. She undertook her clinical training in pediatrics and pediatric critical care, becoming interested in the contribution of neuroimmunology to both rare and common neurodevelopmental disorders. Her postdoctoral work was undertaken with Christopher Glass to map the dynamic transcriptome and epigenome of primary microglia and generate predictions about regulators, pathways, and mechanisms underlying microglia responses to environmental stimuli. To understand and model microglial biology, the Coufal lab utilizes patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells and genome-wide approaches to identify transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms to model genetic and idiopathic neuro disease in vitro and in vivo. Current directions in the lab query the ontogeny and environmental responses of microglia, and the contribution of neuroimmunology to rare and common neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders.