Marissa Scavuzzo is a postdoctoral fellow in Paul Tesar’s lab at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She received her bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and biology before earning her doctorate in developmental biology from Baylor University College of Medicine. In the Tesar Lab, she is studying the network of nervous system cells inside your gut that has been referred to as “the second brain.”

Audrey Courreges is the lab manager in the D’Mello Lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern). She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Southern Methodist University, where she studied correlations between school format and mental health symptoms among autistic youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a position administering neuropsychological assessments to autistic children, Courreges continued her research career at UT Southwestern to join the D’Mello’s Lab. Her research interests largely revolve around the neurocognitive abilities of autistic individuals.

Jessica A. Herstine received her Bachelor of Science in molecular genetics with a minor in neuroscience from The Ohio State University (OSU) in 2020. That same year, she matriculated as a Ph.D. student in OSU’s Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) graduate program, where she joined the lab of Allison Bradbury at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Herstine is now a Ph.D. candidate with active NIH TL1 training grant funding to investigate gene replacement therapy for a rare genetic leukodystrophy called Vanishing White Matter disease. In her current role, she has become adept in numerous techniques such as direct fibroblast to neuron and astrocyte conversions, viral vector cloning, gene therapy application, mouse colony management, behavioral testing, and preclinical study design and execution.

Théo Gauvrit is a graduate student at the University of Bordeaux, in the lab of Andreas Frick at the Neurocentre Magendie in Bordeaux, France. He first joined the team in February of 2020 for his master thesis in bioinformatics, during which he developed tools for the analysis of electrophysiological data to characterize atypical sensory information processing in the Fmr1KO mouse model of autism. He continued his work in the lab as a doctoral candidate, studying the role of neuronal noise and network states in the generation of sensory response variability. He is interested in better understanding the role of neuronal noise in atypical sensory processing in autism and exploring this feature as a translational biomarker of autism and a targetable mechanism for drug development.

Kristen Gilyard is a mentor in the 2024 SURFiN program. She is a graduate student conducting research with Elena Tenenbaum’s lab at the Duke University Medical Center. Gilyard holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and neuroscience from Harvard University. Her research focuses on exploring language development with caregiver-child dyads.

After acquiring a diploma as biological pharmacist from the Belgrade University in Serbia, Senka Hadzibegovic obtained an Erasmus Mundus fellowship to join the neuroscience community in Bordeaux,France to pursuit her Ph.D. During her doctoral studies, under the supervision of Bruno Bontempi from the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases (IMN) in Bordeaux, she used different approaches, ranging from behavioral to molecular analysis in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to identify new markers of AD.

Nathan Johnston is a second-year Ph.D. student in neurobiology at the University of Utah. He completed his bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Washington in 2020 and came to the University of Utah the following autumn. As an undergraduate, he worked in Garret Stuber’s lab at the University of Washington,where he used fluorescence in situ hybridization and functional transcriptomics to map cell types in the mammalian habenula. His graduate work focuses on using a combination of calcium imaging and computational techniques to understand how the computations underlying spatial navigation is altered in contralateral neglect.

Yimei Cai is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Georgetown University. Unlike many other researchers in the field, Cai’s journey started with a teaching career. With a master’s degree in education, she taught biology for two years in local public high schools, focusing on special education. While teaching, Cai developed interests in neurodevelopmental disorders during her interactions with special needs students. After receiving her master’s degree in pharmacology, she was accepted into the Ph.D. program in pharmacology and physiology at Georgetown University.

Carlos G. Orozco is a first-generation Mexican-American born and raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. His first research experience was through the Freshmen Research Initiative program at the University of Texas at Austin where he obtained histheir bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and biology. Through this program, he was part of Josh Beckham’s Virtual Drug Screening lab, where high-performance computing is used to find potential drugs more efficiently and affordably than conventional methods. Orozco then worked in the lab of Laura Colgin studying how coordinated neuron firing is involved in sleep-dependent learning.

Ourania Semelidou is a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at the Neurocentre Magendie, in Bordeaux, France. Following a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and genetics and a master’s degree in molecular medicine, she obtained a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Crete. Her work has yielded novel and influential insights into the neuronal and molecular underpinnings of perception, learning and memory, and how changes in these features contribute to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders (autism, schizophrenia). In her current project, she focuses on better understanding altered sensory experience in autism, by characterizing perceptual measures of tactile and multisensory information processing and uncovering their neural underpinnings in genetic mouse models of autism.

Gabriella Boulting earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in the laboratory of Kevin Eggan in the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard University, where she focused on the application of human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) to study neurogenerative disease. She developed methods to produce human spinal motor neurons in vitro, generated a vetted panel of human PSC lines for in vitro amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease modeling and uncovered disease phenotypes in motor neurons derived from induced PSCs from individuals with ALS.

Colin Florian began their scientific career in 2014 when they became employed at the Genome Engineering and iPSC Center (GEiC) at Washington University in St. Louis. The focus of the GEiC is to generate genetically modified cell lines and animal models using the CRISPR-Cas9 system. In their time as a technician at the GEiC, they were able to master many molecular biology and tissue culture techniques as well as gaining computational experience. Additionally, they trained and mentored several new members of the team throughout my time spent at the GEiC.

Millie Rogers is a second-year graduate student at the University of Miami. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida, where she studied the genetics underlying cochlear detoxification in the mammalian inner ear. She continues her research in genetics at University of Miami, where she is currently investigating the role of a newly identified human disease gene in degenerative neuromuscular phenotypes. Since beginning graduate school, she has taught general biology lab to approximately 30 students/class, leading undergraduates in learning and practicing experimental design and laboratory skills. She is also the proud mentor of three undergraduate students in her lab, whom she has trained in various laboratory techniques related to her research.

Marino Pagan is a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. He received his B.S. in computer engineering and his M.S. in control engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and University of Pisa in Italy. He completed his Ph.D. in neuroscience at University of Pennsylvania in the laboratory of Nicole Rust, where he studied the neural circuits of visual object search in macaque monkeys using electrophysiology and computational modeling.

Anthony Sharkey Ricciardulli graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017 with a B.S. in microbial biology. As an undergraduate, he investigated mechanisms of neurodevelopment during embryogenesis and developed expertise in cellular and molecular techniques. After graduation, he worked as a cellular engineer and tissue culture specialist in the laboratory of Fred Gage at the Salk Institute. There he generated patient-derived neurons to investigate how DNA repair processes and bioenergetics contribute to known neurodegenerative phenotypes using iPSC-derived human neurons. Prior to joining the Neuroscience Ph.D. Program at the University of Utah, he next worked at Sangamo Therapeutics, where his work focused on making AAV-delivered medicines targeting Parkinson’s disease, again using human iPSC-derived neurons to model this complex disease. Anthony joined the Neuroscience Ph.D. Program at the University of Utah where he has embarked on a joint project mentored by Nick Frost and Alex Shcheglovitov using three-dimensional human organoids to model circuit dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders.

With over ten years of research experience and a Ph.D. in neuroscience, Yukti Vyas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Neurocentre Magendie in Bordeaux, France, with a deep interest in studying preclinical models of neurodevelopmental disorders from the cellular to the behavioral level. She is an expert electrophysiologist, behavioral scientist and cell culture specialist, using these techniques to understand the functional nuances of the brain in physiological and pathological conditions. Her research and wider interdisciplinary collaborations have resulted in high-quality publications in neurodevelopment and therapeutic research. Her scientific contributions and presentations have led to prestigious and competitive national awards, including the Mary Bullivant Prize in Physiology, the Physiological Society of New Zealand John Hubbard Prize, and the Kate Edger Educational Charitable Trust Dame Dorothy Winstone Doctoral Award. In addition, she has an aptitude for mentoring graduate students. She has supervised four graduate student projects from start to finish, teaching complex neuroscientific techniques and providing scientific and intellectual support, with the aim to develop them into independent, confident young scientists. She has also taught doctoral and postdoctoral students at the CAJAL Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme and the Australian Course in Advanced Neuroscience, and hundreds of undergraduates in physiology and anatomy courses.

Daniela (Dani) Seczon is a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Washington (UW), where she is studying neural mechanisms of visual cognition of early visual processes in autism spectrum disorders under the supervision and mentorship of Scott Murray. Seczon earned her bachelor’s degree in both psychology and biochemistry from the University of Tulsa and a master’s degree in neuroscience and education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Joshua Tycko is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School. His goal is to uncover how secreted proteins are routed to reach specific cell types to better understand how cells communicate and how those processes can be manipulated for genetic medicine. He received a Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford University where he developed a high-throughput recruitment approach that uncovered hundreds of human transcriptional effector domains that regulate gene expression. He and his collaborators also discovered new recombinases that can directly integrate large DNA into the human genome. Tycko previously worked in the biotechnology industry on measuring, modeling and mitigating CRISPR off-target activity to enable safer genetic medicines.

Vardan Arutiunian isa postdoctoral fellow in Sara Jane Webb’s lab at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. He received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Center for Language and Brain at HSE University in Moscow, Russia in the field of language and communication in autism.In his research, Arutiunian uses behavioral assessment, genetic approaches and neurobiological methods (magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, brain morphometry) to investigate variability of language skills as well as structural and functional brain mechanisms of language impairment in children with autism. He received a number of research and teaching awards from several organizations, including the European Union, and has published eight articles in international peer-reviewed journals.

Leiron Ferrarese has been a postdoctoral fellow in Hiroki Asari’s group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Rome, Italy since 2018. He received a bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Rome “Roma Tre”, Italy, in 2006, and conducted graduate studies in neurobiology at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy. He then won a Ph.D. fellowship at the Max Delbruck Center where he studied dendritic integration in vivo with James Poulet, and received his Ph.D. from the Freie University of Berlin, Germany, in 2017.

Damhyeon Kwak is a neuroscience Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. Before joining the Frost Lab, Kwak completed her master’s degree at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology in Gaegu, Korea. There, she utilized intracortical recordings to understand neural activity driving group behavior. Her work in the Frost Lab continues this focus on understanding circuit function underlying social behavior, and in particular she is interested in understanding how information related to social decisions and actions is altered by behavioral context, and in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disease.

Gerarda Cappuccio is a physician/scientist and a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine. She is a pediatrician subspecialized in genetics interested in neurodevelopmental metabolic disorders. Her goal is to find treatments for patients with untreatable genetic conditions. She discovered two new syndromes and coordinated clinical trials for them, leading to her receiving the 2022 John M. Opitz Young Investigator Award. She is now leveraging her clinical background and translational research experience to investigate the mechanisms of rare genetic syndromes, including copy number variants in 16p11.2 locus. She uses human models of disease, from brain organoids to…

Navroop Dhaliwal is a research fellow in Yun Li’s lab at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto. She has a doctorate in cell and systems biology from the University of Toronto. Her Ph.D. research investigated the molecular mechanism underlying mammalian naïve pluripotency. Her postdoctoral research focuses on modeling and investigating the mechanism of PTEN related neurodevelopmental disorders in hPSCs derived 2D and 3D neural cultures. She uses CRISPR based methodologies to engineer hPSCs and differentiate them into neurons to study the underlying mechanisms. Her research aims to find potential novel therapeutic targets for autism.

Xin Tang is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. He studies genetic and environmental factors regulating synaptic signal transmission, with a focus on KCC2 molecular pathways and the role of KCC2 dysregulation in autism spectrum disorder.

Xinyue Yu is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in linguistics with minors in anthropology, Korean, and Asian Languages & Cultures. Her academic journey has centered around the fascinating fields of neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics. She has gained valuable insights into the connections between language, cognition and the brain through coursework in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics…

Alice Nam received her B.S. in biology from Brandeis University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work focuses on parallel tactile processing in S1 and SC in detection behavior, primarily using optogenetics and in-vivo electrophysiology. Throughout her career thus far, she has served as a mentor to several undergraduate students, technicians and graduate students and hopes to continue this role…