Neuroscience Graduate Program

Congratulations to NSGP students and faculty, who collectively have recently published a series of high-profile papers.

Michael Frank, NSGP Trainer, and colleagues published “Frontal Theta Overrides Pavlovian Learning Biases” in the May 8th issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.  For more details, please link to the following URL:  http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/05/theta

Liz Normand, recently graduated from NSGP with her PhD, along with her faculty mentor, Mark Zervas, and other NSGP faculty, Christopher Moore and Barry Connors, published “Temporal and Mosaic Tsc1 Deletion in the Developing Thalamus Disrupts Thalamocortical Circuitry, Neural Function, and Behavior” in the May 8th issue of Neuron.  For more details, please link to the following URL:  http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/05/tuberous

David Hauser, Brown-NIH graduate student and his colleagues in Mark Cookson’s lab at the National Institute on Aging published “mRNA expression, splicing and editing in the embryonic and adult mouse cerebral cortex” in the April issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Justin Allen, NSGP student, along with Roger Hanlon, NSGP faculty, and others published “Cuttlefish skin papilla morphology suggests a muscular hydrostatic function for rapid changeability” in the upcoming June issue of the Journal of Morphology.

Anne Hart, NSGP faculty trainer and colleagues published ”The Neuroprotective Drug Riluzole Acts via Small Conductance Ca2+-Activated K+ Channels to Ameliorate Defects in Spinal Muscular Atrophy Models” in the April 10th issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.  See the following URL for more information: http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/04/sma

Congratulations to several NSGP Faculty Trainers who received internal research grants.

Gilad Barnea, Eric Morrow, and Elena Oancea each received a Salomon Award.  Link to the following URL for details.  http://www.brown.edu/research/2013-salomon-awards

Gilad Barnea and Barry Connors received a Research Seed Award to investigate “The Role of Electrical Coupling Between Mitral Cells in Olfactory Coding”

Sheila Blumstein received a Research Seed Award to investigate ”The Role of the Right Hemisphere in Speech and Lexical Processing”

Link to the following URL to learn about the Research Seed Awards.

http://www.brown.edu/research/2013-seed-awards

This week’s Journal of Neuroscience features an article by our colleague, Jennifer Morgan, at MBL.  Over the winter break our first year NSGP students were at MBL for our first annual Brown-MBL NeuroPracticum and during their stay, students Saba Baskolyu, Tory McLean, Alissa Trepman worked together with Jen to create the image that is now on the journal cover!  Check it out!

Congratulations to Rayna Carter (NIH-GPP), Liz Normand (NSGP) and Shau-Ming Wei (NIH-GPP) each of whom successfully defended her PhD Thesis in April 2013.   Rayna will seek a position in public policy or grants management, Liz will stay at Brown, continuing in the Zervas Lab until leaving for postdoctoral position at another institution, and Shau-Ming will remain at NIH as a postdoctoral fellow in the Berman Lab.  Well done!

First year NSGP student Matthew Pescosolido is the lead author on new genetics paper aimed at discovering the extent to which distinct DSM disorders share large, highly recurrent copy number variants (CNVs) as susceptibility factors.  The article appeared this week in the top impact Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).  Congratulations to Matt and to his co-authors and advisor, Prof. Eric Morrow!

Congratulations to 2nd year students Eric James and Arielle Schilit, who both received the prestigious NSF Predoctoral Fellowship Award.  Torrey Truszkowski, a 1st year student, received Honorable Mention.  Eric, Arielle and Torrey join myriad other NSGP students who have received the NSF Fellowship and Honorable Mention.

Congratulations to second year NSGP student Eric James, who has been chosen to attend  The Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics & Survival (SPINES) at MBL in Woods Hole.  The program exposes attendees to neuroscience laboratory techniques, contemporary neuroscience research, ethics and survival skills (including grant writing, teaching, public speaking, and others).

The 2012-2013 first year graduate students, along with Brown and MBL faculty and course assistants, spent a week in Woods Hole for a first ever winter session neuropracticum.  The session was the brain child of Professors Anne Hart and Chris Moore.  Students broke into small groups and dedicated two days each to learn techniques in single channel & whole cell patch clamp recording (D Lipscombe and C Aizenman), mouse optogenetics (C Moore),  lamprey immunohistochemistry (J Morgan), and C. elegans behavior & molecular biology (A Hart).  One student described the week as “career-changing experience, and an excellent way to get us stoked and ready for the coming semester”.  Thanks to all who participated in this amazing week!

Please join us in congratulating four students who recently defended their PhD thesis, all of whom will transition to post-doctoral fellow positions.  We wish all of them the best.

Julia Najera defended her thesis on 7 December 2012.  Julia worked with Elena Oancea.  Julia now moves to UCSD for a post-doctoral fellowship.

Emmette Hutchison defended his thesis on 10 December 2012.  Emmette, a (now former) Brown-NIH student, worked with Mark Mattson of the NIA, NIH.  Emmette will soon join a lab on the main NIH campus in Bethesda to work on IPS cells.

Ashly Brown defended her thesis on 20 December 2012.  Ashly worked with Mark Zervas, and she will move to Oregon Health Sciences University soon for a post-doctoral fellowship.

Avinash Pujala, of the Brown-NIH Graduate Partnership Program, defended his thesis on 14 January 2013.  Avi worked with Michael O’Donovan (NINDS) and will stay for a few more months at NIH to finish studies related to his PhD work.