The graduate program in Neuroscience benefits from broad perspectives in neuroscience and expertise from faculty across departments and colleges.

Faculty Available for Rotations

Jessica Ausborn, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Computational modeling of neurons and their interactions; brainstem and spinal control of locomotion and respiration; sensorimotor integration

Peter Baas, PhD

Professor; Director, Graduate Program in Neuroscience
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Degeneration, dysfunction, injury and repair of the nervous system

Jacqueline Barker, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Addiction, learning and memory, behavioral neuroscience, habits, compulsivity, sex differences, drug and alcohol exposure, substance and alcohol use disorders

Jessica R. Barson, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Alcohol use disorder, binge eating disorder, sex differences, individual differences, limbic system, neuropeptides, dopamine, serotonin

Tatiana Bezdudnaya, PhD

Research Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Respiratory plasticity after spinal cord injury

Vikas Bhandawat, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Research Interests: Sensorimotor integration, whole-cell patch clamp and imaging in behaving animals, optogenetics, neuromechanics, locomotion

Marie-Pascale Côté, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Plasticity of spinal networks after spinal cord injury

Simon Danner, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Computational modeling of neural control of locomotion

Megan R. Detloff, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neuropathic pain, spinal cord injury, neuroimmune interactions, neuroplasticity, nociceptors, behavior

Kimberly Dougherty, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Spinal locomotor network organization, rhythm generating mechanisms, plasticity of spinal circuits following spinal cord injury and following treatment with potential therapeutics aimed at restoring function after injury

Felice Elefant, PhD

Professor
Department: Biology, College of Arts and Sciences
Research Interests: Understanding the mechanisms that govern epigenetic regulation of higher order brain function. Epigenetic-based mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative disorders, and broad insights into HAT (histone acetyltransferase)-based drug design for early therapeutic intervention of cognitive deficits.

Rodrigo España, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neural basis of motivated behavior, hypocretin/orexin, dopamine, norepinephrine, behavioral pharmacology, sleep/arousal, substance abuse, fast scan cyclic voltammetry, fiber photometry, multi-unit electrophysiology, optogenetics, DREADDs

Itzhak Fischer, PhD

Professor and Chair
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Cellular and molecular strategies in promoting regeneration; structure and function of neuronal cytoskeleton

Wen-Jun Gao, MD, PhD*

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Synaptic signaling in the prefrontal cortex: impact on cognition and social behaviors related to neurobiology of psychiatric disorders

A. Denise R. Garcia, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Biology, College of Arts and Sciences
Research Interests: Spinal cord and brain injury, cellular neurosciences

Peter J. Gaskill, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: HIV, drug abuse, neuroimmunity, neurotransmission, macrophage immunology, dopamine, serotonin, catecholamines

Simon Giszter, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Spinal cord organization, modularity, motor primitives, control of limb biomechanics, brain machine interface (BMI), comparative motor physiology, corticospinal functions, electromyography, motor control, motor cortex, neuroengineering, neuroprosthetics, neurorobotics, neurobiology, neurorehabilitation, reflex behaviors, rehabilitation, spinal cord injury, systems neurobiology, theoretical and computational neuroscience, trunk/axial controls

John Houle, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neurotransplantation strategies to promote structural and functional recovery after spinal cord injury

Joshua Jackson, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Astrocyte biology, neuro-glial interactions, neurovascular coupling, synaptic development, calcium signaling, mitochondrial dynamics, brain metabolism

Pooja Jain, PhD, MS

Professor; Co-Director, Master of Science in Immunology Program
Department: Microbiology & Immunology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Retrovirus-associated cancer and neuroinflammation, myeloid/dendritic cell-based immunotherapy, extracellular vesicles

Sandhya Kortagere, PhD

Professor
Department: Microbiology & Immunology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Biased signaling of dopamine D3 receptor agonists; developing symptomatic and disease-modifying therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease; etiology of mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease; role of dopamine receptors in neurocognitive impairment in HIV and other neuronal infections

Michael Lane, PhD

Associate Professor; Co-Director, Neuroscience Camp for High School Students; Co-Director, T32 NIH Spinal Cord Injury Training Program
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Spontaneous and therapeutically enhanced neural plasticity following cervical spinal cord injury

Olimpia Meucci, MD, PhD

Professor & Chair
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and drug abuse, chemokine-based therapeutics, neuroprotective pathways in neuroinflammation

Andréia C.K. Mortensen, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Excitatory amino acid transporters, astrocytes, neurological disorders, excitotoxicity, allosteric modulation, stroke, epilepsy, neuropathic pain

Ole Mortensen, PhD

Associate Professor; Director, Pharmacology & Physiology Graduate Program
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neurotransmitter transporters, drug addiction and affective disorders

Liang Oscar Qiang, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neurological disease modeling and potential therapies using iPSC-derived neurons, as well as other cellular reprogramming strategies

Ramesh Raghupathi, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Cell death and plasticity after traumatic injury to the mature and immature brain

Ilya A. Rybak, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Computational neuroscience, motor control, modeling neural control of respiration and locomotion

Antonio Sanz-Clemente, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Synaptic protein content, glutamate receptors, synaptic/extrasynaptic NMDA receptor balance, excitotoxicity, excitatory neurotransmission, synaptic maturation, autism spectrum disorder, post-translational modifications

Veronica J. Tom, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Axon regeneration and plasticity after spinal cord injury

Kazuhito Toyooka, PhD

Associate Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Analysis of neuronal morphology in the developing cerebral cortex - neurite formation and synaptogenesis

Elisabeth Van Bockstaele, PhD

Professor of Pharmacology & Physiology; Chief Strategy Officer; Senior Vice President for Graduate and Online Education; Dean, Graduate College
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Role of monoaminergic systems in stress-related illness and substance abuse disorders

Catherine von Reyn, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems
Research Interests: Sensorimotor transformations, sensory processing, action selection, neural circuit engineering, neural circuit development

Dong Wang, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neural ensemble dynamics underlying learning and memory consolidation; emotion; learning and memory; neurobiology; prefrontal neuronal circuitry; sleep neurobiology; systems neurobiology

Brian Wigdahl, PhD

Professor and Chair; Director, Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease
Department: Microbiology & Immunology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Immunopathogenesis and neuropathogenesis of HIV-1 and HTLV-I infection; transcriptional regulation of retroviral expression; viral sequence diversity and correlations to disease; development of microbicidal agents

Additional Faculty

James E. Barrett, PhD

Emeritus Professor
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine

Timothy Cunningham, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Neuron survival and death, neuroinflammation, central nervous system repair

Sergey Markin, PhD

Research Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Computational neuroscience, motor control, modeling neural control of respiration and locomotion

Aleister Saunders, PhD

Executive Vice Provost for Research & Innovation; Professor
Department: Biology, College of Arts and Sciences
Research Interests: Cellular neurosciences; biochemistry; genetics; biology

Francis Sessler, PhD

Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine

Natalia A. Shevtsova, PhD

Research Assistant Professor
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Computational neuroscience, motor control, modeling neural control of respiration and locomotion

Jed Shumsky, PhD

Professor, Neurobiology and Anatomy; Chair, Academic Affairs Committee; Senior Associate Dean of Educational and Academic Affairs, Graduate School
Department: Neurobiology & Anatomy, College of Medicine
Research Interests: While no longer engaged in active research, he is serves as a consultant for students and faculty who would like help with behavioral testing, animal modeling of human conditions, and statistical analysis.

Kenny J. Simansky, PhD

Professor of Pharmacology; Senior Vice Dean for Research
Department: Pharmacology & Physiology, College of Medicine
Research Interests: Cellular mechanisms involved in regulation of eating