Maria Calvo-Rodriguez, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Brian Bacskai, Massachusetts General Hospital

Maria seeks to understand the mitochondrial dysfunction that takes place in Alzheimer’s disease. She will use her award to host Carmen Infante-Garcia from the University of Cadiz Medical School in Cadiz, Spain in July 2019.

Daniel Denis, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Robert Stickgold, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Daniel studies  how sleep helps to consolidate memories, and how the neural oscillations that occur during sleep help facilitate this process. He will use his award to host Leonore Bovy from the Donders Institute in the Netherlands.

Gary Kane, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Mackenzie Mathis, Rowland Institute

Gary studies motor adaptation and mice. He will use his award to host Dr. Travis DeWolf from Applied Brain Research, a Canadian startup working on large-scale brain models, AI, and robotics, to Harvard for four weeks.

Davide Valeriani, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Kristina Simonyan, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary

Davide’s research focuses on developing neurotechnologies for advancing the diagnosis and treatment of dystonia. He will apply his award to host Dr. Richard Reilly, Professor of Neural Engineering and Ageing at Trinity College, the University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland in January 2020.

Evan Ardiel, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Josh Kaplan, Massachusetts General Hospital

Evan uses C. elegans embryos to investigate the emergence of functional neural circuits, the computations underlying maturing behaviours, and the long-term consequences of perturbing pioneer circuits. He will use his award to study in the lab of Hari Shroff, at the NIH in September 2019.

Maddalena Delma Caitati, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Takao Hensch, Harvard

Maddalena studies the role of metabolic and neuromodulatory pathways in neuro-glia development and plasticity. She will apply her award to visit a collaborator lab in early 2020.

Kathryn Devaney, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Mark Halko, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Kathryn studies human cognitive neuroscience with a focus on visual perception and attention. She applied her award to travel to the lab of Nir Grossman at Imperial College, London in August 2019.

Luis Fonseca-Ornelas, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Dennis Selkoe, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Luis uses a combination of biochemistry and structural biology to study the behavior of proteins involved in neurodegenerative disorders. He applied his award to visit the lab of Friedrich Forster at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands in October 2019.

Michelle Frank
Graduate Student, lab of Lisa Goodrich, Harvard Medical School

Michelle’s work focuses on unraveling the molecular identity of auditory brainstem neurons in order to understand how they influence auditory processing. She applied her award to visit the lab of Catherine Weisz at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, MD in October/November 2019.

Jaeeon Lee
Graduate Student, Lab of Bernardo Sabatini, Harvard Medical School

Jaeeon’s research focuses on how circuits in the brain allows specific kinds of computations to happen and mediate learned behavior. He applied his award to travel to the lab of Tiago Branco at Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in the UK in the summer of 2019.

Yasmin Escobedo Lozoya, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Susan Dymecki, Harvard Medical School

Yasmin studies the regulation of approach/avoidance behavior by specialized subsets of serotoninergic neurons. She will use her award to travel to the lab of Jeremiah Cohen at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in September 2019.

Kevin Mastro, PhD
Postdoc, labs of Beth Stevens/Bernardo Sabatini, Harvard Medical School

Kevin studies the development of the prefrontal cortex and higher cognitive functions during adolescence in both mouse and marmoset. He applied his award to visit the lab of James Bourne at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in January/February 2020. During his visit, he was able to learn state-of-the-art techniques that are being applied to map neural networks in a non-human primate.

Chuchu Zhang, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Stephen Liberles, Harvard Medical School

Chuchu uses molecular and genetic approaches to disentangle the cellular diversity of the Area Postrema (AP) organ while mapping and manipulating specific AP circuit to reveal the neuronal substrates for nausea sensation in the brain. She will apply her award to travel to the lab of Charles Horn at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute in August 2019.

Zihe (Alex) Zhang
Graduate Student, Lab of Clifford Woolf, Boston Children’s Hospital

Alex is working on decoding the patterns of behaviors related to both acute pain and chronic pain. He will use his award to travel to the lab of Gregoire Courtine at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in September 2019.

Cesar Echavarria
Graduate Student, Lab of David Cox, Harvard

Cesar studies how large neuronal populations support the computations required for complex visual behavior. Specifically, how neurons in the rat visual cortex support object recognition behavior. He applied his award to participate in the Brain Reading and Writing: New Perspectives of Neurotechnology course offered by FENS in June 2019.

Linlin Fan
Graduate Student, Lab of Adam Cohen, Harvard

Linlin studies how the brain controls attention using a technique that allows simultaneous optical recording and manipulation of electrical activity of neurons in awake mice. She applied her award to attend the Methods in Computational Neuroscience course offered by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole in July-August 2019.

Oluwarotimi Folorunso, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Darrick Balu, McLean Hospital

Oluwarotimi’s research focuses on understanding the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the synaptic and behavioral abnormalities associated with psychiatric disorders. He will apply his award to take the Advanced Techniques in Molecular Neuroscience offered by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in June 2020.

Travis D. Goode, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Amar Sahay, Massachusetts General Hospital

Travis studies how the hippocampus encodes, stores and retrieves aversively-motivated memories over time and across different environments. He will apply his award to take the Fiber Photometry Workshop offered by Stanford University in January 2020.

Sandra Hanekamp, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Kristina Simonyan, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary

Sandra’s work focuses on understanding brain network abnormalities in patients with movement disorders affecting speech production, such as spasmodic dysphonia, voice tremor and Parkinson’s disease. She is applying her award to attend the 4th International Lead-DBS Workshop in September 2019.

Stephanie Haro
Graduate Student, Lab of Thomas Quatieri, MIT

Stephanie studies how differences in encoding may pose a challenge to decoding auditory attention from neural measurements. She applied her award to the attend the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop in Telluride, Colorado in June/July 2019.

Cole Korponay, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Suzanne Haber, McLean Hospital

Cole maps and characterizes connections between brain regions using classic tracing techniques in non-human primates. He will apply his award to attend the Connectivity Course: Structural and Functional Brain Connectivity via MRI and fMRI offered by the Martinos Center at MGH in October/November 2019.

Paul Masset, PhD
Postdoc, Labs of Nao Uchida/Venki Murthy, Harvard

Paul studies the computations performed by neuronal populations in the brain, in both the olfactory system and midbrain dopaminergic neurons. He will take the Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques course offered by the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in Jupiter, FL in February 2020.

Olivia Meyerson
Graduate Student, Lab of Hopi Hoekstra, Harvard

Olivia studies the genes underlying species-specific burrowing behaviors in wild mice in order to better understand how genetic variation leads to changes in the brain to produce ecologically relevant behaviors. She applied her award to attend the Quantitative Genetics course offered by University of Washington Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics in July 2019.

Shruti Mishra
Graduate Student, Lab of L Mahadevan, Harvard

Shruti works on using reinforcement learning to understand the emergence of co-ordinated locomotion in soft-bodied animals. She applied her award to attend the Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning Summer School in Edmonton, Canada in July/August 2019.

Christopher Reid
Graduate Student, Lab of Corey Harwell, Harvard Medical School

Christopher’s project is focused on studying the developmental mechanisms behind neural diversity in the septum. Specifically he is investigating the transcriptional and lineage trajectories established from neural progenitors in the septum. He applied his award to attend the CSHL Advance Techniques in Molecular Neuroscience course in June/July 2019.

Amanda Rodrigue, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of David Glahn, Boston Children’s Hospital

Amanda uses structural and functional neuroimaging methods in conjunction with genetic analyses in humans to find and characterize biomarkers that may aid in understanding the etiology and prognosis of psychiatric disorders. She applied her award to attend the Exploring the Human Connectome course offered by Portland State University in July 2019.

Maria Sundberg, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Mustafa Sahin, Boston Children’s Hospital

Maria’s research is focused on study of neuropsychiatric disorders with human iPSC derived dopaminergic neurons and medium spiny neurons that carry rare copy number variations. She applied her award to attend the Workshop on Clinical Translation: Advancing Clinical Trials with Stem Cells offered by Cedars in Sinai Los Angeles in June 2019.

Theodore Turesky, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Nadine Gaab, Boston Children’s Hospital

Theodore studies how poverty affects brain development. He applied his award to attend Neurohackademy, a two week hands-on summer institute on neuroimaging and data science held at the University of Washington eScience Institute in July/August 2019.

Rockwell Anyoha
Graduate Student, Lab of Hopi Hoekstra, Harvard

Rockwell uses a combination of machine learning and morphometric matching to better understand the diversity of behaviors exhibited by multiple species of wild mice. He applied his award to attend the International Physics of Living Systems conference in July 2019.

Meenakshi Asokan
Graduate Student, Lab of Daniel Polley, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary

Meenakshi studies the neural circuits underlying auditory perceptual awareness. She will apply her award to attend the Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics conference in Capbreton, France in September 2019.

Sara Beach
Graduate Student, Lab of John Gabrieli, MIT

Sara uses behavioral, neuroimaging, and machine-learning techniques to understand the neural bases of differences in how people learn, perceive, and produce oral language. She will apply her award to attend the 11th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language in August 2019.

Urs Bohm, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Adam Cohen, Harvard

Urs’ research focuses on the mechanisms governing the formation of blood-brain barrier and blood-retina barrier. Specifically, he investigates the intercellular signaling pathways contributing to the integrity of these barriers during development. He will use his funds to attend the Endothelial Cell Phenotypes in Health and Disease conference in Castelldefels, Spain in June/July 2020.

David Brann
Graduate Student, lab of Bob Datta, Harvard Medical School

David studies how these olfactory receptors modify olfactory sensory neuron gene expression and neuronal activity. He used his award to attend the GPCR Retreat in Quebec, Canada in September 2019.

Kevin Blake Chancellor
Graduate Student, Lab of Jesse Gray, Harvard Medical School

Kevin is interested in using single cell genomics to investigate how neuronal activity regulates myelination, which is a potential mechanism for learning and memory. He will apply his award to attend the Next-Generation Genomics conference in August 2019.

Kelsey Clausing
Graduate Student, lab of Lauren Orefice, Massachusetts General Hospital

Kelsey investigates the somatosensory circuits mediating the sense of touch and the mechanisms by which these circuits go awry in Autism Spectrum Disorders. She will apply her award to attend the Keystone Symposium – Neurocircuitry of Social Behavior (L4) in Daejeon, South Korea in May 2020.

Arturo Deza, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Talia Konkle, Harvard

Arturo currently works on understanding the topography of visual representations in biological and artificial neural networks. He will apply his award to attend the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference in September 2019.

Timothy Hammond, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Beth Stevens, Boston Children’s Hospital

Timothy is interested in how specialized microglia subpopulations are involved in nervous system development and contribute to brain pathology, with a focus on neurodegenerative and neuroinlammatory diseases. He will use his award to attend the Great Lakes Glia Conference in September/October 2019.

Xiao Han, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Jesse Gray, Harvard Medical School

Xiao is interested in studying the mechanisms by which neuronal activity influences oligodendrocyte precursor differentiation and maturation. To address that, she is using a multidisciplinary approach, ranging from behavioral to genetic molecular analysis. She applied her award to attend the New Perspectives in Myelin Function and Disease conference in July 2019.

Nao Horio, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Stephen Liberles, Harvard Medical School

Nao’s research focuses on the mechanism how internal state changes the olfaction sensitivity. She will apply her award to attend the 18th International Symposium for Olfaction and Taste in Portland, Oregon in June 2020.

Amanda Jacobson, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Isaac Chiu, Harvard Medical School

Amanda studies how pain-sensing neurons interact with immune cells to regulate inflammation in the intestine. She will apply her award to attend the 4th Meeting of the Federation of Neurogastroenterology & Motility in Adelaide, Australia in March 2020.

Carolyn Johnson, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Takao Hensch, Harvard

Carolyn’s research seeks to elucidate how the experience of early life stress alters trajectories of cellular and circuit development in a rodent model. She will apply her award to attend the Flux Congress in August/September 2019.

Nicholas Jourjine, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Hopi Hoekstra, Harvard

Nicholas is interested in identifying the genetic and neural causes of behavioral variation in natural populations. He will apply his award to attend the Neural Mechanisms of Acoustic Communication Gordon Research Conference in Sunday River, Maine in July 2020.

Jess Kanwal, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Aravi Samuel, Harvard

Jess studies how neurons in the brain combine smell and taste information and how this improves an animal’s ability to find food. She applied her award to attend the Neuroethology: Behavior, Evolution and Neurobiology Gordon Research Conference in July/August 2019.

Urs Langen, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Chenghua Gu, Harvard Medical School

Urs investigates the heterogeneity of the Blood Brain Barrier. He will apply his award to attend the Gordon Research Conference: Endothelial Cell Phenotypes in Health and Disease in Castelldefels, Spain in June/July 2020.

Michal Lipinski, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Paola Arlotta, Harvard

Michal uses various single-cell technologies applying novel computational methods to better understand how neuronal identity is regulated during cortical development in mammals. He will apply his award to attend the Keystone Symposia on Single Cell Biology: Pushing New Frontiers in the Life Sciences in Florence, Italy in May 2020.

Elizabeth May
Graduate Student, Lab of Rachelle Gaudet, Harvard

Elizabeth investigates the atomic- and molecular-scale interactions of neuronal proteins that are important for proper dendritic arbor development. She applied her award to attend the Excitatory Synapses and Brain Function Gordon Research Seminar in June 2019.

Shan Meltzer, PhD
Postdoc, lab of David Ginty, Harvard Medical School

Shan is working on the molecular mechanisms of touch sensory neuron development in mammals. She applied her award to attend the Cell Biology of Neurons and Circuits II conference at the Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, VA, in September 2019.

Samara Miller, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Amar Sahay, Massachusetts General Hospital

Samara studies the Inhibitory circuits modulating hippocampal neurogenesis. She applied her award to attend the Gordon Research Conference – Inhibition in the CNS in July 2019.

Kevin Mizes
Graduate Student, lab of Bence Ölveczky, Harvard

Kevin studies motor sequence production in rodents, investigating at how actions are represented in the striatum. He will the 2019 AREADNE Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles meeting in Santorini, Greece in June 2020.

Andrew Peckham, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Courtney Beard, McLean Hospital

Andrew studies how cognition and emotion contribute to impulsive behavior. He will apply his award to attend the Neurocognitive Therapies and Translational Research SIG Meeting at ABCT in Atlanta, GA in November 2019.

Manuel Peter, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Jeff Macklis, Harvard

Manuel uses directed differentiation of stem cells into specific neurons to better understand how certain transcription factors guide the process of development and function of the human brain. and how those neurons form connections with neurons in other brain regions. He will apply his award to attend the Cold Spring Harbor conference on the Development and 3D Modeling of the Human Brain in December 2019 in Cold Spring Harbor, NY.

Juliana Rhee
Graduate Student, lab of David Cox, Harvard

Juliana studies the neural circuits underlying visual object recognition. She will apply her award to attend the Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) conference in Denver and Breckenridge, Colorado in March 2020.

Mootaz Salman, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Tom Kirchhausen, Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital

Mootaz is working on developing the first in-vitro model of BBB-on-chip that can be used on the advanced lattice light sheet microscope (LLSM) to study the trans- BBB traffic of fluorescently-labeled therapeutic antibodies and viruses. He applied his award to attend the 13th International Conference on Cerebral Vascular Biology in June 2019.

Elena Sergeeva, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Paul A. Rosenberg, Boston Children’s Hospital

Elena studies zinc signaling in the retina, retinal ganglion cell survival and axon regeneration. She will apply her award to attend the 6th Meeting of International Society for Zinc Biology in September 2019.

Slater Sharp
Graduate Student, lab of Bob Datta, Harvard Medical School

Slater studies dedicated olfactory circuits that allow them to acquire food preferences from conspecifics in mice understand the rules governing this form of social communication in mice. He applied his award to attend the 2019 meeting of the European Chemoreception Research Organization in Trieste, Italy in September 2019.

Yu-Tzu Shih, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Amar Sahay, Massachusetts General Hospital

Yu-Tzu studies the inhibitory microcircuits in DG-CA3 of the hippocampus and PV BC structural plasticity. She applied her award to attend the Inhibition in the CNS Gordon Research Conference in July 2019.

Matthew Smith
Graduate Student, Lab of Benjamin de Bivort, Harvard

Matthew studies how individuality arises in odor preference and odor coding within the Drosophila melanogaster brain, and how individuality arises in learned behaviors within those isogenic populations. He will apply his award to attend the Bernstein Conference in September 2019.

Jeffrey Stogsdill, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Paola Arlotta, Harvard

Jeffrey’s research focus is centered on investigating the interface between the nervous system and the immune system in controlling the development of the brain. He will apply his award to attend the Keystone Symposia on Neuro-immune Interactions in the Central Nervous System in Keystone, CO in June 2020.

JohnMark Taylor
Graduate Student, labs of Talia Konkle/Yaoda Xu, Harvard

JohnMark uses fMRI and computational modeling to study conjunctive coding in the human visual system. He applied his award to attend the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Conference in Berlin, Germany in September 2019.

Cinzia Vicidomini, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Amar Sahay, Massachusetts General Hospital

Cinzia’s research focuses on adult hippocampal neurogenesis and more specifically on the regulation of this process by a secreted factor. She will apply her award to attend the Keystone Symposia on Neuro-Immune Interactions in the Central Nervous System in Keystone, CO in June 2020.

Nivanthika Wimalasena
Graduate Student, lab of Clifford Woolf, Boston Children’s Hospital

Nivanthika’s research focuses on how neuronal activity in sensory neurons modulates itch, and what specific types of sensory neurons are involved. She applied her award to attend the 10th World Congress of Itch in Sydney, Australia in November 2019.

Huixin Xu, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Maria Lehtinen, Boston Children’s Hospital

Huixin studies the regulation of cerebrospinal fluid by the choroid plexus during brain development more specifically focusing is on the secretory activities occurring at the choroid plexus epithelial layer. She will apply her award to attend the Keystone Symposia on Cerebral Fluid Flow and Function: Lymphatics, Glymphatics and the Choroid Plexus in Santa Fe, NM in February 2020.

Lynn Yap
Graduate Student, lab of Mike Greenberg, Harvard Medical School  

Lynn’s research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which sensory experience modifies the strength of synapses in the brain, in particular GABAergic inhibitory synapses. She applied her award to attend the 2019 Ascona Meeting on Neuronal Circuits in Ascona, Switzerland in September 2019.

Xi Yu, PhD
Postdoc, Lab of Nadine Gaab, Boston Children’s Hospital

Xi’s current research focuses on the neuro-developmental trajectories underlying language and reading development from infancy to school age, and the influences of genetic and environmental factors along this process. She will apply this award to attend the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of Society for the Scientific Study of Reading in July 2019.

Joseph Zak, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Venki Murthy, Harvard

Joseph seeks to understand how neural circuits are modified to facilitate learning and how these modifications influence the detection of sensory stimuli. He will apply his award to attend the Gordon Research Conference on Neuroplasticity of Sensory Systems in Hong Kong, China in June 2020.

Jennifer Zuk, PhD
Postdoc, lab of Nadine Gaab, Boston Children’s Hospital

Jennifer researches the intersection of developmental cognitive neuroscience, music cognition, and clinical translation to examine the potential for music to serve as a rehabilitation tool to promote speech and language development. She will apply he award to attend the Neurosciences and Music conference in Aarhus, Denmark in June 2020.