The people behind Kestrel

Dr. Keene is a Board-certified neuropathologist formerly at University of Washington where he founded and directed the UW BioRepository and Integrated Neuropathology (BRaIN) lab and the Pacific Northwest Brain Donor Network, which supported major research efforts to develop reference cell and circuit atlases of human brain in the BRAIN Initiative. In 2026, Dr. Keene moved to University of California San Diego to become Chair of the Department of Pathology and director of the Center for Neurodegeneration Science in support of the Allen Brain Health Accelerator and other prospective neurodegenerative disease studies. Dr. Keene is multiple PI of the Seattle Alzheimer’s Disease Brain Cell Atlas (SEA-AD), incoming Leader of the UCSD Shiley Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Neuropathology Core, co-director of the Parkinson’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PPMI) Pathology core, and holder of the Florence Riford Alzheimer’s Disease Research endowed chair.

The primary goals for Dr. Keene’s research lab are to develop, deploy, and promote technologies that accentuate the scientific utility of archived and prospectively acquired human brain tissue, to utilize discoveries derived from these critical resources to develop and test hypotheses in experimental systems, and to apply this knowledge to develop therapeutic strategies.