CASANDRA CARTAGENA
Casandra earned a BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan in 1994, and this year she obtained a Master's degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Eastern Michigan University. She has spent 5 years working in the field of neuroscience at the Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan. Her Master's thesis, under the mentorship of Dr. Juan F. Lopez investigated the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the brain’s response to chronic stress. In particular, she examined regulation of p53 in the brain following treatments of chronic unpredictable stress and antidepressants. She presented some of her preliminary data at the recent SFN meeting in Orlando. Casandra has broad-based interests in neuroscience.
CRAIG DIETRICH
In 1995, Craig was awarded a B.A. in Psychology from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. At Carleton, Craig did research in the laboratory of Dr. Larry Wichlinski where he studied the effects of i.c.v. administration of CCK on memory, and its interaction with the estrus cycle in the rat. As an undergraduate, Craig was the recipient of a Howard Hughes Institute summer fellowship. For his senior thesis Craig did research on the effect of an antagonist of vasoactive intestinal peptide on inhibitory avoidance behavior in the rat. After graduation, Craig worked in the laboratory of Dr. Suzanne Mansour at the Univ.of Utah, using molecular biology techniques including DNA/RNA analysis and vector construction. He then joined the laboratory of Drs. Thomas Parks and Lance Zirpei in the Department of Neurobiology at the Univ.of Utah where he conducted research on ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors in developing chick auditory nuclei, and was co-author on a publication on this work in 2002. Craig is interested in several areas of neuroscience research and especially in neurochemical substrates of memory consolidation.
JULIET MINTON
Juliet graduated from the College of William and Mary this year. She grew up in the D.C. area and her family still lives in the vicinity. Her major at William and Mary was Neuroscience with a minor in Anthropology. Juliet is interested in cognitive neuroscience, biological anthropology, primate behavior, and language. For her honors thesis at William and Mary, Juliet examined the role of the opioid system in the social learning of food preferences in adolescent rats.
J. BREK EATON
Brek Eaton graduated from Arizona State University in 1998 with a B.S. in Microbiology. He then took a position as a research technician in the laboratory of Dr. Ron Lukas at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix where he has been doing pharmacological and molecular studies on the cellular regulation of neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. The focus of Brek's research has been on subunit composition - function relationships for the various nicotinic receptors. He has done mechanistic studies on the regulation of the receptors, and he has co-authored a publication in the Journal of Neuroscience Research. Brek is especially interested in drug-receptor interactions and neuropharmacology.
ALEXIS JEANNOTTE
Alexis received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Richmond in 2002. After taking a course in pychoimmunology she became excited about neuroscience research, especially related to the integration of the endocrine, immune, and neural systems. She has conducted research in this area during the past year, and hopes to continue to pursue similar research at the graduate level.
KATHERINE MEEKER
Katherine graduated this year from Colgate University with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience. She spent a summer in the lab or Dr. Richard Mazurchuk at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a molecular and cellular biophysics lab that utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Prior to her summer at the Roswell Institute, she did research in a social psychology laboratory under the direction of Dr. Frederick Gibbons at Iowa State University. She has broad-based interests in brain-behavior mechanisms.
ALEXANDRIA NUGENT
Alexandria's early undergraduate education was in Texas. She has a Master’s Degree in Psychology, after which she returned to obtain a B.S. in Biology from University of Maryland last year. She has worked at a psychiatric clinic in Dallas supervising clinical trials that centered on treating patients with posttraumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder. This experience led Alexandria to become interested in the underlying mechanisms of these disorders. Alexandria has also worked in a laboratory where she used in vivo microdialysis and HPLC to analyze neurotransmitters in brain regions in a rodent model of depression. She has held a research position at the Natl. Human Genome Res.Inst. and more recently at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences where she used transplants of genetically engineered cells to assess the ability of neurotrophins to produce functional improvements in rats with neocortical or basal forebrain lesions. She has already authored two papers (second author) and has two more in preparation. She is interested in synaptic interactions, neuroendocrine regulation, stress and mood disorders.
THERON RUSSELL (TED)
Ted graduated from Carleton College in 2001 with a B.A. in Neuroscience. Ted's senior thesis work in behavioral pharmacology tested the hypothesis that the herbal antidepressant, St. John's Wort, or one of its components, would exhibit antidepressant activity in test models in mice. Ted then took a position as Research Assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Lawrence Wichlinski in the Psychology Dept at Carleton. Ted was involved in determining the effects of i.c.v. administration of cholecystokinin and cholecystokinin antagonists on memory and anxiety in the rat. After graduating, Ted obtained a Research Technician position in Chicago at Northwestern in the laboratory of Dr. J. Larry Jameson. Ted is co-author on 2 papers that have been published from this laboratory and first author on a paper that has been submitted for publication entitled " A Progressive Neuronal Cell Death in Autosomal dominant Neurohypopheseal Diabetes Insipidus" His interests include neuropharmacology, molecular and biochemical bases of behavior, cognition and affect, and how genetic variation and environmental factors contribute to neurological and psychiatric illnesses.
SUNBIN SONG
Sunbin graduated in 2000 with a BS in Biology from MIT, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Her science courses included biochemistry, cell structure, physiology, cell biology, psychology, sensation & perception, and immunology. As an undergrad, she conducted research on actin at Harvard Medical School, and then spent 3 consecutive summers at the NIH in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Quon, who investigated insulin signaling pathways. She is co-author on a publication from this laboratory in 2001 about phosphoinositide-dependent kinase-1. From 1999-2002 Sunbin worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she was involved in cardiovascular and neuroendocrine research. Sunbin has spent the past Spring semester at Georgetown where she has taken some elective courses and conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Neale.
YI ZHANG
Yi received her B.S. in 2000 from Ocean Univ. of Qingdao. She is currently completing a Master's degree in the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her interest in Georgetown initially stems from the fact that the lab she is currently working in collaborates with Dr. Jian-Young Wu. [Jian-Young currently has a postdoc who came from that lab, and Jian-Young has met Yi Zhang previously.] She has taken a wide range of courses in math, physics, computer science and biology, and has also done several research projects in computational neuroscience leading to papers presented at conferences in China. She is especially interested in both computational neuroscience and neural development.