Ellen Sidransky, chief of the Molecular Neurogenetics Section, is a pediatrician and clinical geneticist in the Medical Genetics Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis University with a B.A. in biology and received her M.D. from Tulane University. She then trained in pediatrics at Children’s Memorial Hospital/Northwestern University and completed fellowship training in clinical genetics at the NIH Genetics Training Program. She has been a tenured investigator at NIH and a section chief since 2000. Her research includes both clinical and basic research aspects of Gaucher disease and Parkinson’s disease, and her group first identified glucocerebrosidase as a risk factor for Parkinsonism. She is the 2024 recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Science for this work.