What's going on in the lab?

July 2024

Aanchal and Kelton presented their postdoctoral project at Brandeis Neuroscience Postdoc symposium. 

May 2024

Welcome to Fox Gourianova, a new graduate student in the lab. Fox is a second-year PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program, coming from the University of Maryland - College Park with a B.S. in Neuroscience and a B.A. in Linguistics.  Fox will be working on characterizing the instructive signal from the entorhinal cortex. Outside of the lab, Fox is an avid curler and lover of tabletop role-play games.

April 2024

We are excited to welcome a new postdoc, Kelton Wilmerding. Kelton earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Boston University where he studied the neural correlates of artificial memory reactivation with Michael Hasselmo and Steve Ramirez. He has an enduring interest in how changes to the brain at the cellular and network level enable us to recall our most cherished experiences. Outside of lab he is a huge nerd, pet lover with three cats, and hiking enthusiast.

The first paper from the lab was published in PNAS this month. It is a collaboration at the interface of neuroscience and neuromorphic computing between the Milstein, Ramanathan, and Grienberger labs. Check it out here and any and all feedback is welcome: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2318362121

October 2023

It is finally official. We have won the NIH New Innovator Award (DP2). The grant will support research on the entorhinal cortex and its interaction with the hippocampus to drive learning and memory formation. We are incredibly grateful to the NIH for support of our research. Congrats to all the other winners!

https://commonfund.nih.gov/newinnovator/AwardRecipients

September 2023

Thomas, a Neuro Master's student with a Physics background, joins the lab. Thomas will work on our calcium imaging analysis pipeline.

The semester starts. Welcome to rotation Fox Gourianova, first-year Neurosciencegraduate student. 

July 2023

Christine becomes a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. Thanks a lot to the Pew Charitable Trust for supporting our work. 

Welcome to rotation student Brian Zhang! Brian will learn how to do two-photon Ca2+ imaging. 

Mai 2023

Mike passes his Inside exam. Congratulations, Mike Vivian, now officially Ph.D. candidate!

We are recruiting a postdoc to work on a collaborative project with the Paradis lab at Brandeis University starting September 2023 (but the start date is flexible). The project aims to uncover the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and its impact on learning and memory formation. This is an ideal position for someone with systems neuroscience training who wishes to learn molecular and cellular neuroscience, or vice versa. If you are interested to learn more, please get in touch via email.

March 2023

We welcome Vincent Chen. Vincent is a first-year Neuroscience graduate student and is doing a rotation in the lab. 

Gabe wins an undergraduate summer fellowship from the Division of Science. Congratulations, and we look forward to having you over the summer to do some exciting science. 

February 2023

Christine wins a Sloan Research Fellowship. We are deeply grateful to the Sloan Foundation for its support. Early career support like this makes a huge difference for our work. 

January 2023

Happy New Year!

We welcome Connor Johnson. Connor is a first-year Neuroscience graduate student and is doing a rotation in the lab. 

Also, a heartfelt welcome to Lisandro Martin, a new graduate student. Lisandro will work on the circuit mechanisms underlying behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity. 

December 2022

A lot is going on. Brandeis Magazine published a story about the memory research happening at Brandeis, including some of ours. Here is the link: https://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/2023/winter/featured-stories/memory.html

The application for the Cold Spring Harbor Ion Channel in Synaptic and Neural Circuit Physiology is now open. Christine will be an instructor again. Email her with any questions. 

Fantastic news to close the year. Christine's Cosyne workshop, submitted together with Aaron Milstein (Rutgers) and Richard Naud (University of Ottawa), has been accepted. The Cosyne meeting will happen in early March 2023 in Montreal (workshop in Mont Tremblant) and sits at the interface of systems and computational neuroscience. Our workshop will be on "Making plasticity work: biologically plausible rules for learning and credit assignment." If you are interested, join us and/or email Christine with any questions. 

August 2022

The team is growing! Welcome to Brandeis Undergraduates Zachary Fournier and Gabriel Haithcock. They will become first-class animal whisperers. We also welcome Ruixue Gao (Brandeis Master's student). She will work on identifying projections of the hippocampal formation to the rest of the brain. 

Christine is starting teaching. NBIO240 "Principles of Neuroscience Research" will be a lot of fun and a lot of work. Hodgkin-Huxley papers, here I come! 

Mai 2022

We are delighted to have Mike Vivian join the lab for his graduate studies! Mike is a second-year PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program. Prior to joining Brandeis, he received a B.S. in Neuroscience with minors in Chemistry and Neuroengineering from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Mike is currently exploring how spatial representations in the hippocampus update during reversal learning. In his free time, you can find him reading historical nonfiction, wandering the streets of Waltham, and socializing with other students in the Life Sciences. Welcome, Mike!

April 2022

Wohoo! The lab wins its first external funding. We are deeply grateful to the Smith Family Foundation for the Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research. 

March 2022

The lab welcomes three more rotation students. Welcome Adriana Prada, Kirsten Judge, and Mike Vivian. Let the sciencing begin!

February 2022

The lab welcomes Aanchal Bhatia, postdoctoral fellow. Aanchal will kick off the in vivo whole-cell recordings in the lab!

January 2022

Happy New Year! 

Christine gives a talk at the 2022 Park City Winter Conference on Learning and Memory. 

The lab welcomes its first two rotation students. Welcome Rico Rodriguez and Edward L. Rivera! We look forward to doing a lot of science together! 

The lab is featured in the Brandeis Hoot. Thanks a lot to Shruthi Manjunath for the interview. 

December 2021

Christine's latest research is out as a pre-print. Our work demonstrates a new role for the entorhinal cortex as instructor of learning-related place cell representations in CA1. No study is ever perfect, so comments are welcome!