IPN students 2006

Drew Emery
ace33@georgetown.edu

Drew graduated from George Mason University with a B.A. in Psychology in 2005 and received an MA in Biopsychology in 2007. As an undergraduate, Drew conducted psychological research on members of an incarcerated population as a research assistant to Dr. June Tangney. For his graduate research, Drew conducted studies aimed at gaining an understanding of the impact of psychotropic drugs on gene expression in patients with schizophrenia and tardive dyskinesia. For his thesis on “Altered Dysbindin-1 Expression in Schizophrenia: Psychotropic Effects and Diagnostic Differences” Drew designed and piloted the use of an oligonucleotide probe for in situ hybridization on sections of rat and human neocortex. He is first author on an abstract on his results to be presented at the 2007 SfN meeting. As a result of his extensive experience as a graduate teaching assistant for laboratories including statistics and research methods, Drew has developed a passion for teaching in addition to research. Drew is especially interested in neuropharmacology and the roles of neurotransmitters and genetics in neurological disorders. He is also eager to expand his skills and gain experience with electrophysiology and neuroimaging.

Tanya graduated in 2003 from Lehigh University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. As an undergraduate she conducted fluidics experiments on medical diagnostic instruments, a project that involved a collaboration with industry personnel. During a summer internship, Tanya worked on a pressure transducer and on improving the sensitivity of a method for blood clot detection in patient samples. After graduation, Tanya worked for Akzo Nobel Chemicals on a project formulating surfactant molecules for agricultural applications. Most recently, Tanya has been working as a research specialist at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute at the University of Delaware, investigating cutting edge approaches to the use of gene therapies for spinal muscular atrophy, a neurological disorder affecting young children. Tanya has served as a teaching assistant for both chemistry and calculus. As a tutor, she has developed and implemented customized academic enrichment programs in mathematics and science at middle school to grad school levels. Tanya has become fascinated by research aiming not only to stop degeneration, but also to promote regeneration of spinal motor neurons. Tanya is especially interested in targeted gene therapy and regenerative stem cell applications for curing neurodegenerative disorders.

Evan graduated from Duke in 2004 with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in English. As an undergraduate Evan worked in the lab of Dr. Scott Huettel at the Duke University Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, where he continued working following graduation. Evan learned fMRI procedures and statistical methods of data analysis as he conducted studies on the neural mechanisms of executive function and economic decision making. His independent study project investigated brain systems involved in the processing of rewards under different risk levels. Evan presented his results as an abstract at the 2005 Organization for Human Brain Mapping conference, and he is also a coauthor on another abstract presented at the same conference in 2006. In addition, Evan led the data analysis for a research project that was reported in a 2006 paper in Neuron entitled “Neural Signatures of Economic Preferences for Risk and Ambiguity”, on which he was coauthor. During the past year as a research assistant at Health Systems Research Inc., Evan conducted literature searches, interviewed and wrote about health issues, specifically vaccines. Evan is especially interested in systems and cognitive neuroscience, and in the computational, electrophysiological and imaging approaches that can be used to reveal the underlying neural mechanisms.

Dawn graduated from the University of Florida in December, 2006 with a B.S. in Psychology. She worked with Dr. Catherine Price and Dr .Christiana Leonard investigating the relationship between the integrity of white matter structures as assessed by diffusion tensor MR imaging, and executive function in healthy older adults. This experience allowed Dawn to gain skills for quantifying neuroanatomical structures in MR images, and to learn the use of several data management programs. Dawn is first author on an abstract in which this work was presented at the February, 2007 International Neuropsychology Society meeting in Portland. In addition, under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Kleim, Dawn has examined the effects of cortical stimulation in a rat model of post-stroke recovery of function in which she evaluated performance of the rats on a variety of motor tasks. Dawn is interested in research in the areas of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience and in recovery of function after injury. She is intrigued by the prospect of studying Alzheimer's disease, other neurodegenerative diseases, and CNS plasticity after injury due to stroke or trauma.

Leah received her B.S. in 2005 from Virginia Tech where she majored in Psychology, and minored in Chemistry and Classical Studies From early 2002 until graduation, Leah worked in the Mind/Body Laboratory of Dr. Bruce Friedman, where she studied cardiovascular responses in male and female human subjects presented with various types of stimuli. Her research findings contributed to three abstracts on which she is a coauthor. Following graduation, Leah worked full time at the Center for Functional and Molecular Imaging (CFMI) here at Georgetown where she coordinated and assisted with several projects, including a project aimed at assessing the perceptual skills involved in imagery analysis. She is coauthor on an abstract on a study of children with ADHD from the laboratory of Dr. Vaidya presented at the 2007 Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting. Leah has experience tutoring calculus I and II to undergraduates. Leah is especially interested in research at the interface between physiology, neurochemistry and behavior, and the use of neuroimaging techniques to better understand these interfaces.

Brandon graduated from the University of Virginia in 2004 with a B.S. in Biology. As an undergraduate, Brandon conducted research in Dr. Jay Hirsh’s laboratory, studying dopamine and serotonin transmission in Drosophila in response to cocaine exposure and stress. After graduation, Brandon worked full time in the laboratory of Dr. Jaideep Kapur in the Neurology Department at UVA. In Dr. Kapur’s lab, Brandon examined the synergistic actions of NMDA antagonists and benzodiazepines in the termination of status epilepticus. He has also developed a new animal model for catamenial epilepsy by inducing pseudo-pregnancy in adult female epileptic rats. By treating these animals with an inhibitor of allopregnanolone production from progesterone, he can provoke increases in seizure frequency akin to that observed in catamenial epilepsy during menses. He is hoping that this model will provide an opportunity to examine novel drug therapies for catamenial epilepsy. Brandon has trained and supervised 3 undergraduates in the course of pursuing this research. Brandon is especially interested in neuroprotection, and plasticity, particularly in the context of epilepsy and spinal cord injury.

msm79@georgetown.edu

Monika attended Tufts University where she received her B.S. in Computer Engineering in 2002. In 2003 she received her Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). As a graduate student, Monika conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. David Munson, where she studied dynamic programming optimization techniques and implemented a second-order Bayesian model for 2-D phase unwrapping of radar signals. After receiving her MS, she worked for Northrop Grumman as an engineer in signal processing and communication systems, modeling systems at the level of signal generation, transmission, and reception. Monika has a passion for teaching that developed in graduate school during the three semesters she served as a teaching assistant for an undergraduate electrical engineering lab. Monika has also served as an intern teaching math in high school. Her recent experience at St. Petersburg State University, Center of Russian Language and Culture, learning to read, write and speak Russian, has kindled her fascination with the brain basis for language and communication. She hopes to apply her computational and engineering skills to computational modeling of biological functioning and systems-level functioning of the brain and nervous system. Monika is interested in applying behavioral analysis, computational modeling, brain imaging and neuronal recording toward gaining a better understanding of cognitive processes.

Michael graduated from the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico in 2004 with a B.A. in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences. As an undergraduate, Michael conducted research in the laboratory of Dr. Juan Carlos Jorge at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Center, studying the rewarding effects of endogeneous neurosteroids in rats. He found that an endogenous neurosteroid, when infused into the medial preoptic area of the female rat, has rewarding, addictive-like properties. Michael then came to the NIMH as an IRTA fellow in the laboratory of Drs. Mortimer Mishkin and Richard Saunders where he studied the superior temporal sulcus of the rhesus monkey during an auditory working memory task using FDG-PET and fMRI. Michael then continued to pursue studies with monkeys in the laboratory of Dr. Barry Richmond, recording from neurons in orbitofrontal cotex during a reward schedule task. He also examined histological preparations of brains from macaques and rats that had been exposed to toxic levels of magnesium. Michael presented an abstract of some of his research at the 2005 SfN meeting. Recently, Michael joined the laboratory of Dr. Josef Rauschecker at Georgetown. Michael is especially interested in neural substrates of perception, attention, and memory, as well as the neural plasticity involved in the functional reorganization of cortex after injury or deprivation.

Clara Scholl

cas243@georgetown.edu

Clara received her B.A. in Physics from Kalamazoo College in 2005. She was awarded an HHMI undergraduate summer research fellowship to study single molecule mechanics in the biophysics laboratory of Dr. Miklos Kellermayer Jr. in Pécs, Hungary, where she used an atomic force microscope to investigate force-driven unfolding events in a muscle protein. Clara's data was included in a publication in 2005 on which she is a coauthor. Following graduation, Clara received an IRTA fellowship at the Neuroimaging Research Branch at NIDA to use MRI to explore neural dynamics and pharmacological manipulations in rodent models, including studies of cocaine-induced activation. She learned to operate the MRI scanner and monitored animal physiology, and she introduced methods of data acquisition and analysis to improve quantification of pharmacologic and event-related fMRI experiments. Her efforts earned her coauthorship on two SfN abstracts in 2006. At NIDA, Clara also screened and recruited subjects for human experiments, and participated in a project exploring causal models to describe functional connectivity between cortical regions during a working memory task. She presented the preliminary results of this study at a US - Hungarian Workshop in 2006. Clara’s teaching experience covers a broad range of subjects, from physics, math and electronics, to stage combat and mountain biking. Clara is eager to learn more about research in systems and cognitive neuroscience and the ways that computational and imaging approaches can be used to reveal the nonlinear dynamics of the underlying neural circuitry.

Brian received his B.S. from UC Santa Barbara in 2002, where he was a Pharmacology major and Math minor. As an undergraduate he was a research assistant in the field of behavioral pharmacology in the laboratory of Dr. Aaron Ettenberg, studying animal models of drug addiction. He gained additional experience in behavioral pharmacology after graduation when he worked at Roche Pharmaceuticals, developing rodent models for assessing antidepressant activity. In 2004, he took a staff research associate position in the Small Molecule Discovery Center in the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department at UCSF, a high-throughput screening center. At UCSF, he designed and carried out screens, as well as developing chemoinformatic tools and robotic instrumentation for the acquisition, storage, analysis, and reporting of data. His efforts have generated a publication in the journal Chemical Biology and Drug Design, on which he is a coauthor. His experience in computer programming and informatics has stimulated his interest in computational methodology and prompted his desire to gain experience in computational approaches to neuroscience. Brian is interested in a broad array of neuroscientific questions, and he hopes to be able to combine the use of electrophysiological, computational and imaging approaches in his research.