Neuroscience Program Faculty
Program Director
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Autism spectrum disorders, genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders, ubiquitin proteasome pathway
Faculty
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Epigenetics, neurological disorders, genome engineering, single-cell genomics
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Engineering adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors; Developing viral-mediated gene therapies for pediatric neurological disorders; developing gene therapies for Alzheimer’s and neurogenerative diseases; selective targeting of AAV vectors to the central and peripheral nervous systems; facilitating the translation of gene therapies to use in clinical trials
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Biomedical engineering, Brain and spinal cord monitoring, Cerebral metabolism and hemodynamics, Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), Diffuse optical spectroscopy (DOS), Intraoperative neuromonitoring, Medical device development, Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), Non-invasive monitoring, Spinal cord hemodynamics
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Biomarkers, Biotargets, Vascular Dysfunction, Organ Dysfunction, Inflammatory Disorders, Endothelial Function, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Translational Research.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: MR spectroscopy, MR spectroscopic imaging, MRI, Brain, GABA, glutamate, Glioma, Major depressive disorder, Bipolar disorder, epilepsy, MEGA-PRESS, metabolite mapping, AI, neural networks
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Somatosensation, pain and touch pathways, mouse genetics, in vitro and in vivo physiology, optogenetics
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Cognitive neuroscience; language; cognition; social communication; fMRI; neuroimaging; autism spectrum disorders; development; cerebellum
Professor
Research Interests: Motor function, dystonia, Parkinson’s disease, neural circuits, neurodegeneration
Professor
Research Interests: Mechanisms of amyloid propagation in neurodegenerative diseases, especially tauopathies (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease), synucleinopathies (e.g. Parkinson’s disease), and polyglutamine diseases (e.g. Huntington’s disease); linkage between amyloid structure and biological impact
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Aging and stress response signaling in traumatic brain injury and neurodegeneration
Professor
Research Interests: Functional neuroanatomy of the mammalian hypothalamus
Professor
Research Interests: Behavioral neuroscience, microbiome, neuroimmunology, psychiatry, biomarkers, bioinformatics, animal models of disease, mental health
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Brain-computer, interface, cognitive control, metacognition, motor control
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Ataxia, Cerebellar anatomy, Cerebellar development
Professor
Research Interests: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Epigenetics, chromatin biology, gene regulation, social behavior, aging, neurodegeneration
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythms and how they control metabolism
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Dissection of neural mechanisms that support integration of sensory information, memory, and internal state to guide behavior using a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses molecular genetics, neural recording, optogenetics, behavioral experiments, and computational modeling.
Professor
Research Interests: Function and regulation of membrane transporters; electrophysiology; biophysics of ion pumps and channels
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Treatment Resistant Depression, Animal Models, Lateral Habenula, Systems Neuroscience
Professor
Research Interests: Mechanisms of synapse development, plasticity and circuit function, and alterations of these processes in mouse models of intellectual disability and autism
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Hypothalamus and neuroendocrinology, Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative disorders, obesity and metabolic disorders, genetic mouse models, human imaging and biofluid markers
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular control of neuronal diversity and balancing progenitor cell maintenance with neuronal differentiation in the vertebrate central nervous system implications for tumor progression in neural and neuroendocrine cancers
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Neural circuit genetics, neural representation and memory engrams for learning and memory in entorhinal-hippocampal circuits of rodent brain under normal and psychotic conditions by applying in vivo calcium imaging, in vivo electrophysiology, viral-tracing and circuit manipulation
Professor
Research Interests: Genetic dissection of endocytic trafficking in Drosophila
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Connectivity and development of neuronal circuits generating somatosensation; molecular and functional diversity of spinal cord interneurons
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Memory encoding and retrieval; Restoring memory function after brain injury
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Neuroimaging, MRI, dynamic brain connectivity, dopamine, astrocytes, reward and learning, neurovascular coupling
Professor
Research Interests: Learning and Memory; Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Neuronal Activity-dependent Gene Transcription; Experience-dependent Synaptic Modification; Neural Circuits; GABAergic Inhibitory Circuits; E/I Balance; Memory Discrimination and Generalization
Professor
Research Interests: Developmental neurobiology, cellular and molecular basis of synapse formation, function, maintenance, and degeneration, using approaches including electrophysiology, genetics, and molecular biology.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Cellular and functional diversity in the hypothalamus; 5-HT circuits underlying energy and glucose homeostasis; Fetal programming of obesity and diabetes
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Chromatin dynamics and epigenetic regulation of activity-dependent gene expression; the role of genomic instability in neurological disorders and cancer
Professor
Research Interests: Understanding the molecular basis of glycogen malformation in the fatal Lafora epilepsy and devising gene and small-molecule based therapies for this and other childhood neurogenetic disorders
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Developing state-of-the-art machine-learning approaches to extract radiological imaging and imaging-genomic biomarkers for individualized prognostics in neuroscience and oncological applications
Professor
Research Interests: Friedreich’s ataxia, chromatin and transcription regulation, repeat sequence instability, gene editing, mitochondrial dysfunction, induced pluripotent stem cell models of neurodegeneration, cerebellar function and degeneration
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Regulatory mechanisms impacting structure, function and location of glycogen; Molecular consequences of glycogen storage diseases; Development of treatment strategies on molecular basis of the disease pathogenesis; Engineering proteins for improved Gene Therapy
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Dietary and nutritional targeting of glioma, mouse models of brain tumors, mitochondrial and anti-oxidant metabolism, redox and growth factor signaling
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Neuro-immune interactions, intestinal neural circuits, host-microbial interactions, gut-brain axis and circadian clock
Professor
Research Interests: Neuroprotection, CNS injury, neurodegenerative diseases, axon regeneration, CNS circuits
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Consolidation and recall of memory via large-scale, high-density in vivo recordings of neural activity during free behavior in rodents, focusing on spatial navigation as a specific example of more general memory formation and use
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Neural Circuits for Basic Biological Motivations, Pain, Pain Relief, Cell-type Targeted Gene Therapies
Professor
Research Interests: Analyses of intracranial human neurophsyiology to investigate basic human neuroscientific principles of motor control, the pathophysiology of disease, and to develop novel stimulation-based therapeutics for human neuropsychiatric disease, including depression, OCD, and consciousness.
José Rizo-Rey (Josep Rizo), Ph.D.
Professor
Research Interests: Biophysical studies of the mechanisms of neurotransmitter release and intracellular membrane fusion
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Cellular and circuit mechanisms for vocal imitation, learning from vocal models, and using auditory feedback to learn from vocal practice
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: FMRP, Fragile X, auditory development, hearing loss
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Reward circuit function in animal models of depression and addiction
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Structure of molecular assemblies in cells and neurons using 2D and 3D correlative cryo-EM
Vikram Shakkottai, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Research Interests: Cerebellar ataxia, SCA, ion channels, neurodegeneration, selective neuronal vulnerability, potassium channels, Purkinje neurons
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Alzheimer's Disease, tauopathies, cellular tau uptake, neuroinflammatory mechanisms and role of the innate immune system in neurodegeneration
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Neuron-glia interaction, oligodendrocyte, myelination, neurological disorders
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Mechanistic studies of volume sensors and mechanosensors, ion channel structure-function and related channelopathies
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular and genetic analysis of the mammalian circadian clock system
Professor
Research Interests: Schizophrenia; postmortem brain; human brain imaging; human translational neuroscience
Professor
Research Interests: Axon growth and guidance; neuronal connectivity; axon regeneration; actin cytoskeleton; spinal cord injury and degeneration
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the formation of neuronal circuits responsible for cognition and behavior
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: CNS injury and diseases, axon regeneration, neural circuit connectivity, vision restoration, neuron-glia interaction
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Elucidating the molecular, synaptic, and circuit mechanisms underlying memory persistence
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Diffusion MRI; QSM; Neuroimaging; ML/AI; Alzheimer's Disease; Osteoarthritis
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Mitochondrial dysfunction, neurodegeneration and PARP-1-dependent cell death (PARthanatos) in Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and traumatic brain injury
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Movement Disorders, dystonia, motor control, dopamine, striatum, human development, MRI, diffusion imaging, deep brain stimulation
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Inherited retinal degenerations, stem cell biology, gene editing, gene therapy, mouse models of ocular disease, metabolism and metabolic reprogramming, photoreceptor cells, genetic mechanisms of disease
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Understanding at a cellular level the neural of control energy balance as well as glucose metabolism, and elucidating how these events may participate in human disease
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Chromatin regulation of mammalian neural development; function of chromatin remodeling complexes in key signaling pathways that regulate neural stem cell self-renewal, differentiation, and post-mitotic neuronal development
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Mechanistic understanding of fundamental cognitive processes including memory and brain executive controls whose dysfunction is implicated in multiple neuropsychiatry disorders
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: High-density large-scale neural recordings in psychosis model mice; translational human recordings/data analysis in psychotic patients
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular and cellular mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease and neurodegenerative disorders
Professor
Research Interests: Transcriptional regulation of neural stem cells and their role in regeneration and brain tumors
Professor
Research Interests: Tumor suppressor genes (TSG), TSG syndromes, neurofibromatosis type 1, RAS, MEK/ERK, MAPK, p53, developing and adult neural stem cells, neural-crest stem cells, pediatric and adult brain tumors, brain development and evolution, autism spectrum disorder(ASD), neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric diseases
Professor
Research Interests: Gut-brain axis hormones and neuronal circuits underlying obesity, diabetes, hypoglycemia, cancer cachexia, ALS, and learning/memory
Associate Members
These faculty members do not accept graduate students. They participate in teaching, co-mentoring, exam and dissertation committees, and all other program responsibilities.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Pathology; comparative histopathology; neuropathology; developmental biology; ophthalmic pathology
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Stem cells, intestine, developmental biology, gastrointestinal physiology, gastrointestinal cancer
Professor
Research Interests: Electrophysiology, neuronal circuits in neocortex, and neuroscience
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Friedreich’s ataxia, chromatin and transcription regulation, repeat sequence instability, gene editing, mitochondrial dysfunction, induced pluripotent stem cell models of neurodegeneration, cerebellar function and degeneration
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Circuit dissections for learning related neuronal organizations, global neuronal activity for memory, regulation of neurotransmitter mechanisms
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Locally produced estradiol has been demonstrated to be important for the regulation of synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. However, very little is known about the factors that regulate the expression of aromatase, the enzyme that converts testosterone into estradiol, in the brain. Our lab uses cell culture techniques and molecular approaches to learn more about the regulation of aromatase expression in the hippocampus of rats and mice.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Magnetoencephalography (MEG), neural oscillations, aging, cognition, cognitive impairment, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Associate Professor
Research Interests: 3D reconstruction; Connectomics, Digital Pathology, Histology, Image Analysis, Neuroscience, Serial Two-Photon Tomography, Stroke, Volumetric Imaging
Professor
Research Interests: Circadian Physiology; Feeding and Light Entrainment of the Circadian System; Live Cell/Tissue Real-Time Imaging; Mouse Models for Human Disorders Caused by Disruption/Disorganization/Misalignment of the Circadian System; Neural Circuit Controlling Feeding and Locomotor Activity Rhythms; Pacemaker Coupling