Cesar Canales, PhD profile page

Dr. Cesar Canales is a developmental biologist and interdisciplinary research scientist with a strong interest in the molecular mechanisms, gene regulatory programs and environmental factors that influence normal and aberrant neurodevelopment. He earned his PhD from UNSW Sydney (Australia) and currently serves as an assistant professional researcher in the Nord Neurogenomics Lab at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience. Canales holds a faculty appointment at UC Davis through the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Canales’ research focuses on understanding the genetic and environmental risk factors underlying neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), with particular emphasis on monogenic forms of autism and intellectual disability, as well as risk associated with prenatal exposure to maternal immune signaling. Utilizing mouse and in vitro models as experimental tools, his work investigates cerebral cortex and cerebellum perturbations, gene-environment interactions and cell-type-specific molecular mechanisms driving disease. He employs a multidisciplinary toolkit that includes genome editing, high-throughput and single-cell sequencing, imaging technologies, and multiomic integration to identify shared and divergent pathways across NDDs.