Stories of Women in Neuroscience

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Janine who studies processes of memory formation. As an undergraduate, Dr. Janine Kwapis had some trepidation about starting a class in biological psychiatry, having been warned to avoid it because it was “too hard”. Today, however, she’s grateful she wasn’t scared away, as it was that course that helped her discover a lifelong interest in the biologic...

This episode features Megan’s interview with Dr. Andrea Gomez who studies the role of RNA splicing in synaptic plasticity Dr. Andrea Gomez saw the perfect opportunity to delve into her recent fascination with red blood cells when a classmate’s nose began to bleed during elementary school. Much to her teacher’s horror, Andrea swirled the pooling blood around with a stick, hunting for the tiny red b...

This episode features Megan’s interview with Z Yan who studies octopuses, bumblebees, and is striving for change as a university professor

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Yarimar who studies studies the molecular and neural mechanisms of pain perception in the amygdala. As a curious young student growing up in Puerto Rico, Dr. Yarimar Carrasquillo had always assumed there were two career paths available to those who had a talent for math and science: engineering or medical school. Then, as a pre-med biology student at th...

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Maria who studies the neural mechanisms of how social interactions influence fear and avoidance behaviors. When she was in 8th grade, Dr. Maria Diehl’s curiosity drove her to a defining moment. During a fetal pig dissection in biology class, Maria first followed her teacher’s instructions, identifying different organ systems in the chest and abdomen. Bu...

This episode features Sabrina’s interview with Abha who studies the neurogenetic underpinnings of autism within understudied populations of the broader ASD community

This episode features Megan’s interview with Silvana who studies the synaptic and circuit mechanisms underlying maternal behavior and physiology

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Jessica who studies cerebellar influence on neural development and social and cognitive behaviors. It was the tobacco hornworm that first gave Dr. Jessica Verpeut a taste of the wonder of science research. As an undergraduate interested in biology, Jessica joined an entomology lab studying the pesty hornworm, with the eventual goal of genetically engine...

This episode features Caitlin's interview with Anne who studies how sensory information, internal states, and experience influence decision-making behavior. Dr. Anne Urai discovered her interest in the brain almost entirely by chance. Her love of science, maths, languages and philosophy in high school, and reluctance to choose between them, lead her to pursue a dual major degree in science and hum...

This interview features Megan K.’s interview with Caroline who studies neural circuits of aggression and their perturbations in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases

This episode features Nancy Padilla’s interview with Kaela who studies Menke's diesease and neurodevelopment using molecular approaches.

This episode features Leslie’s interview with Rudy who studies how the encoding of visual stimuli is affected by behavioral context In science, we often follow the well-trodden path – we leverage skills we have already mastered, play to our lab’s strengths, and focus on research topics with a developed background. Dr. Rudy Behnia prefers the road less traveled; she prefers delving into newly forme...

This episode features Catie’s interview with Sally who studies neural stem cells to design therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases

This episode features Caitlin’s interview with Katharina who studies the neural circuits and immunological processes underpinning psychosis

Daniela interviews Joni, a professor in the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley who works to infer complex cognitive processes from neural activity.

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Maya who studies how stress affects social behavior and the brain to identify targets for therapeutic intervention.

This episode features Chiaki’s interview with Dr. Marlene Cohen who studies how visual information is encoded in groups of neurons and used to guide behavior.

Following her philosophical curiosities into the realm of neuroscience, Dr. Yazmin Escobedo Lozoya has dedicated her career to answering questions like “how do we learn”? Yazmin first started her PhD at Duke University, which was a total culture shock after her childhood in Mexico. The shock of the productivity-based priorities of the academic community at Duke was too much for her and she left th...

Dr. Charlotte Stagg has wanted to be a research scientist since the age of ten. After a slight detour into medicine, Charlotte was drawn back into neuroscience research during medical school when she used noninvasive recording and stimulation techniques to study stroke recovery. She eventually left the medical profession behind entirely and decided to get her PhD at the University of Oxford, where...

Throughout her career, Kate Hong has followed her curiosity to make amazing discoveries about how sensory information guides behavior in the brain. After finishing her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Brown University, Kate worked as a research technician in labs in immunology and cancer biology. However, it wasn’t until she was working in a neuroscience lab at the Max Planck Institute in G...

Farah Lubin began her career as a neuroscientist just as the field was starting to wake up to the world of epigenetics and neuroimmunological techniques. Armed with a background in immunology from her PhD at SUNY Binghamton, Farah turned her interests to understanding the brain. In her first postdoc with Dr. Anne Anderson at Baylor College of Medicine, Farah studied how transcription factors chang...

Kara Marshall’s research interests and trajectory in neuroscience have made her a bit of an outsider. After all, she studies the peripheral nervous system. Kara did her PhD research in Dr. Ellen Lumpkin’s lab studying touch perception. However, partway through her thesis, the Lumpkin Lab moved from Baylor College of Medicine to Columbia University, where she had to redo her qualifying exams and st...

When Kia Nobre left her family home in Brazil to go to university in Massachusetts, she could never have known where her passion for science would eventually take her. After falling in love with neuroscience in undergrad at Williams College, Kia ended up pursuing a PhD at Yale where she studied human language processing, long term potentiation in animal models, and even was able to work with some...

As a teenager in India, Kanaka Rajan decided early on that she wanted to be a scientist. After completing her undergraduate degree in engineering, Kanaka pursued a PhD at Brandeis, stepping out of her math and theory-based comfort zone and diving into the deep end of experimental neuroscience in her rotations. She eventually returned to a more computational lab with Professor Larry Abbott, where s...

Dr. Indira Turney’s fascination with how the brain ages began when her grandmother was diagnosed with dementia. After growing up watching her grandmother lose her memories, Indira decided to leave the small Caribbean island where she had spent her childhood and went to the University of the Virgin Islands to study psychology. There, she got involved in clinical research and was immediately engaged...