Thomas E. Mahan, PhD was born on October 26th,1985 to Edward and Lynn Mahan. While growing up in Hudson Falls, he participated in baseball, basketball, soccer, bowling, track and field, and ice hockey. He was a member of the National Honor Society and graduated from Hudson Falls in 2003.
After high school, Tom then journeyed to Lebanon, IL to be a member of the McKendree University Men’s Bowling team and pursue his BS in Biology. While at McKendree, he was also a member of the Men’s Ice Hockey team and was a member of the national math and science honor society, Sigma Zeta. He graduated in 2007 and began working for the life science company Sigma-Aldrich in St. Louis, MO.
While working for Sigma-Aldrich, he received his MS degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Missouri – St. Louis in 2011. Tom then took a job as a research assistant at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis working on Alzheimer disease research in the lab of Dr. David Holtzman. In 2014, he entered the Neuroscience graduate program at Washington University in the Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. In 2021, Tom received his PhD for his research focused on understanding the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s, the APOE gene.
During grad school, Tom and his wife Jessica had three sons, Teddy, Zackary, and Conley. His oldest son, Teddy, was born with Down syndrome and became the motivation for his scientific endeavors. In 2022, Tom began working as a Postdoctoral research scholar working on developing new human cell-based models to better understand how Alzheimer’s develops in Down syndrome. Upon completing his Postdoctoral training, Tom hopes to continue pursuing career opportunities to advance scientific research into preventing and treating Alzheimer disease in those with Down syndrome.