Tom Rusielewicz is a NYSCF principal scientist at The Jackson Laboratory in New York City, where he leads efforts to develop and scale human cell‑based experimental models. His work supports JAX’s mission by generating rigorous, reproducible platforms that advance discovery and help reveal mechanisms underlying complex diseases.
Rusielewicz specializes in automated systems—including liquid handlers, imaging platforms and physiological assay technologies—to phenotype human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)–derived models. These scalable systems enable high‑quality, unbiased data generation across diverse cell types and experimental conditions.
Among his notable accomplishments, he helped lead a study using hiPSC‑derived excitatory and inhibitory neurons from war veterans with and without post‑traumatic stress disorder. His team discovered that applying stress hormone treatment in vitro was essential for uncovering PTSD‑specific differences in neuronal responses. This work culminated in a publication in Nature Neuroscience (Seah et al., 2022) and highlighted the power of human cellular models to reveal disease‑relevant biology.
Rusielewicz earned his doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center while conducting research at Hunter College, where he studied remyelination mechanisms in the context of multiple sclerosis. He later completed postdoctoral training at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, focusing on Alzheimer’s disease, before joining the New York Stem Cell Foundation and ultimately becoming part of JAX through the JAX‑NYSCF collaboration.
He hopes that building robust, unbiased disease‑modeling platforms will accelerate insights into the root causes of dysfunction and drive therapeutic discovery.