His laboratory is interested in how the brain repairs itself following injury. The presence of adult neural stem and progenitor cells in the mammalian brain has awakened new interest and optimism in potential treatment for a variety of acquired brain disorders. The kernie lab is investigating how adult neural stem and progenitor cells participate in injury-induced remodeling and in identifying genes and drugs that might be important in augmenting their contribution.Anoxic brain injury causes in order to do this, they have generated a variety of transgenic mice that allow for temporally controlled alterations in the endogenous stem cell population in order to optimize the post-injury remodeling that occurs.