Specialization
Focus of research
studied Biochemistry and Pharmacy and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. After a postdoctoral experience at the Leiden-Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (now Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research), aimed to study the cognitive consequences of gene knockdown using RNA interference, Carlos joined the Neuroscience Program at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, the University of Amsterdam as Assistant professor in 2010, within the group Structural and Functional Plasticity of the Nervous System. He became a Faculty Staff member in 2013.
The focus of the Fitzsimons lab is to identify common mechanisms by which brain insults affect cognition. For this, we focus on a group of insults that modify the proliferation and function of neural stem cells, resulting in the presence of abnormal neurons, circuits, and cellular alterations associated with neurodegeneration and cognitive impairment.
The Fitzsimons Lab is financed by the Innovational Research Incentive Scheme VIDI from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the International Foundation for Alzheimer's Research (ISAO), Alzheimer Nederland, and by ERA-NET NEURON. The Network of European Funding for Neuroscience Research (NEURON) is a European Research Area Network (ERA-NET) co-funded by the European Commission that supports basic, clinical, and translational research in the field of disease-related neuroscience. As a co-fund, this ERA-NET NEURON project receives local financial support from NWO/ZonMw, Hersenstichting Nederland, the National Initiative Brain and Cognition and is part of the Topsector Life Sciences & Health program.