Course Directors

Alberto Pereda


Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Alberto Pereda is a Professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His laboratory is interested in the properties and dynamics of gap junction-mediated electrical transmission in the vertebrate brain. The approach involves investigating electrical transmission at identifiable auditory mixed (electrical and chemical) synapses on the fish Mauthner cells, as well mammalian brain structures. While the study of plasticity of chemical synapses has long been an area of primary interest to neuroscientists, less is known about the modifiability of electrical synapses. Alberto’s laboratory investigates mechanisms underlying changes in synaptic strength at electrical synapses, which ultimately requires determining their full molecular and structural complexity. Alberto has served as faculty in the Neurobiology course from 1996-2000 and 2004-2007, and directed the Grass Laboratory in 2012-2014. He began co-directing NS&B in 2020.

Stephanie White


UCLA

Stephanie White is Professor of Integrative Biology & Physiology at UCLA where she also chairs the Undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program. Her lab studies the neural basis of socially-learned vocal communication using songbirds. She conducted her doctoral training with Russ Fernald at Stanford University, investigating the social regulation of reproduction in cichlid fish. She was a postdoc at Duke with Rich Mooney, studying the neural basis of birdsong. Steph has previously been a student in NS&B and co-directed the Grass Labs in 2009-11. She began co-directing NS&B in 2019.

Course Director Opportunity

Directors of MBLadvanced training courses are leaders in their fields and are highly committed to the training of the next generation of scientific leaders. If you may be interested in serving as a course director for the Neural Systems & Behavior course, we would love to hear from you. Among other characteristics, successful course directors have a proven track record of training/mentoring and are familiar with the missions of the MBLand NIH/NIMH. Course directors serve five-year terms. Contact Director of Education, Dr. Linda Hyman atlhyman@mbl.edufor more information.

Course Faculty

Alberto Pereda,Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Stephanie White, UCLA
Mark Alkema, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Serapio Baca, University of Virginia
Mark Beenhakker, University of Virginia
Vikas Bhandawat, Drexel
Dawn Blitz, University of Miami
Micahael Brecht, Humboldt University
Gwyneth Card, Columbia University
Jess Cardin, Yale University
Maurice Chacron, McGill
Ann Clemens, University of Edinburgh
Melissa Coleman, NSF
Daniel Colon-Ramos, Yale
Stephen Cowan, University of Arizona, Tucson
Nancy Day, Whitman College
Catherine Dulac, Harvard
André Fenton, NYU
Jeremy Florman, UMass
Eric Fortune, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Jessica Fox, Case Western
Jan Grewe, University of Tubingen
John Huguenard, Stanford University

Yasmin Hurd, Mount Sinai
Mimi Kao, Tufts University
Gaby Maimon, Rockefeller University
Daniel Meliza, U Virginia
Hamish Mehaffey, UCSF
Antonia Murin-Burgin, Instituto de Investigacion en Biomedicina de Buenos Aires
Adriane Otopalic, Janelia
Laura Quintana, Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute
Ulises Ricoy, University of Arizona, Tucson
Josh Rosenthal, Ůֱ
Vicky Salazar, Cape Breton University
Felix Schweizer, UCLA
Ben Scott, Boston University
Marie Suver, Vanderbilt University
Lydia Szczupak, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Krista Todd, Westminster University
Nic Tritsch, New York University
John Tuthill, University of Washington
Matt Van der Meer, Dartmouth University
Vivek Venkatachalam, Northeastern University
David Weisblat, UC Berkeley
Michael Wright, California State University Sacramento

Course Staff

Course Assistants

  • Sarah Villagomez, Colby College
  • Kylee Meece, Western Kentucky University

Teaching Assistants

Cycle I

Leech

  • Grace Padilla, UCSD
  • Christopher Winchell, UC Berkeley

Cycle II

Electric Fish

  • Myriah Haggard, McGill

Stomato-thalamo-gastric ganglion

  • Anna Schneider, New Jersey Institute of Technology
  • Scott Kilianski, University of Virginia
  • Sonal Kedia, Brandeis University
  • Smita More-Potdar, New Jersey Institute of Technology
  • Ryan Snyder, Miami University

Teaching Assistants

Cycle III

Fly

  • Jazz Weissman, Rockefeller University
  • Sam Asinof, Janelia Farms
  • Uros Bulatovic, Rockefeller
  • Yichen Luo, U Washington
  • Ninghan Wang, Drexel

Mouse

  • Miriam Janssen, Dartmouth
  • Joe Lebowitz, OHSU
  • Gabriel Winter, U Arizona
  • Olivier Dubanet, Yale
  • Peng Xu, Yale

Cycle IV

Birdsong

  • Nicole Tai, Tufts University

Worm

  • Sahana Gangadharan, Northeastern
  • Sinal Rasouli, Northeastern
  • Ilana Albert, Northeastern
  • Andy Leifer, Princeton
  • Diego Rayes, UNS-CONICET