Principal Investigator

Terrance T. Kummer, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, a clinical neurointensivist in the Barnes-Jewish Hospital Neurological and Neurosurgical intensive Care Unit, the Director of the EXPLORE program in the Gateway Curriculum, and the Director of the Neurotrauma ICU. Dr. Kummer received his MD and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis where he studied synaptogenesis at the neuromuscular junction. He completed his clinical training in Neurology and Neurocritical Care at Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital) before returning to St. Louis in 2012. Dr. Kummer’s initial work at WashU revealed a novel injury mechanism in subarachnoid hemorrhage—axonal injury—that linked this deadly form of brain hemorrhage to traumatic brain injury (TBI). The application of MRI-based measurements, validated in preclinical models against gold-standard histological analysis, permitted confirmation of these findings in human patients. Dr. Kummer now focuses on identifying and measuring the key loci of cellular injury in TBI and Alzheimer’s disease with a particular interest in synaptic and other forms of CNS gray matter injury. The lab developed a novel imaging technique to quantify synapses called SEQUIN, and applied this technique to identify synaptic loss after TBI. We are now using SEQUIN to better understand the mechanisms of synaptic injury in TBI, and the relationship between this process and subsequent neurodegeneration. Dr. Kummer was born and raised in Rochester, Minnesota, and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota.