2025 POSTDOC PIONEERS

Congratulations to the 2025 HBI Postdoc Pioneers! Recognizing that innovation frequently occurs at the interface of different disciplines and requires labs to venture out of established areas of expertise, these awards aim to support postdocs who take on new or risky projects.

Nurunisa Akyuz
Lab of David Corey, Harvard Medical School
Structural Insights into the Molecular Machinery of Hearing Using Human Inner Ear Organoids

Vikram Chandra
Lab of Mansi Srivastava, Harvard University
A New Neuroscience Model for Distributed Computation, Brain Regeneration, and Evolution

Rachel Segal Greenberg
Lab of Stephen Liberles, Harvard Medical School
Characterizing Neuronal Control of the Female Reproductive Tract

Alen Juginović
Lab of Dragana Rogulja, Harvard Medical School
Understanding How Sleep Loss Promotes Colorectal Cancer Development Through Gut Oxidation

Eric Moult
Lab of Adam Cohen, Harvard University
Whole-Brain, Multi-Timepoint Recording of Neural Activity

Özge Demet Özcete
Lab of Pascal Kaeser, Harvard Medical School
Multiple Serotonin Release Modes Under Distinct Molecular Control

Sisi Yang
Lab of Chenghua Gu, Harvard Medical School
Identification of Novel Blood-Brain Barrier Regulators Using Spatial Proteomics In Vivo

Community Stories

When Other People Feel Like “Robots”: The Detection of Automatic Behavior in Others
Have you ever had the sense that the person you’re talking to is just a “robot”? That they’re following some script without thinking about it? New research by Ilona Bass and Tomer Ullman examines the detection of automatic behavior in other people, finding it is a common and robust phenomenon across domains.
Excitement Over Dendritic Excitations
Neurons receive synaptic inputs all along their dendrites. Dendrites can produce electrical spikes, independent of the cell body. What are these excitations for? Park, Wong-Campos, and Cohen mapped the voltage throughout the dendrites of neurons and found that dendritic excitations were mostly triggered by specific patterns of spiking at the cell body – suggesting that the dendritic excitations play an important role in regulating synaptic plasticity.
The Development of Instincts at the Single Cell Level
A new study from Catherine Dulac and colleagues, first author Harris Kaplan explores how one small brain region called the preoptic area (POA) of the hypothalamus changes through early life in mice. Though tiny, the POA is a known hub for neurons that govern basic needs like thirst and hunger, as well as neurons that regulate social behavior.

Upcoming Events

The Adolescent Brain 101
June 5, 2025
11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Location: Northwest Building, Room 243
Featuring Leah Somerville (Harvard)
gNeuro June Meeting
June 9, 2025
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Location: Armenise 330
Featuring talks by Jingyi Chi (Liberles lab, HMS) and Kazuki Nagashima (HMS)