Marco Baptista

Dr. Marco Baptista leads the Foundation’s mission to advance cures for spinal cord injury and paralysis. He provides oversight of the research portfolio and a collaborative approach to accelerating the field toward meaningful treatments.

Prior to joining the Reeve Foundation, Dr. Baptista served as Vice President, Research Programs at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. In this role, he was closely linked to the Parkinson’s community as he worked to develop an aggressive and innovative agenda for accelerating research and drug development for Parkinson’s disease, focusing on understanding LRRK2, a major genetic form of parkinsonism.

Dr. Baptista earned an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from McMaster University, Canada. After completing his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Marco spent more than five years in the pharmaceutical industry leading a preclinical Parkinson’s program.