Dec 2015
Shown in picture, back row, left to right: Nicole, Olivia, Xiaoto Jin, front row: Laura, Nicki.
Previous Lab Members
Jianli Sun, PhD - Instructor
Jianli joined the lab in 2013. Jianli has been studying the cellular effects of mild traumatic brain injury in YFP-h mice.
Nicole Ekanem, MS - PhD student
Nicole joined the lab as a student volunteer in January of 2013. She subsequently became a Master's student in the department of Anatomy & Neurobiology. She was part of our beginning studies using the technique of optogenetics combined with whole cell patch clamp. She received her Masters' degree in 2015. Nicole is currently a PhD student in the lab and continues to use optogenetics to understand the role of inhibitory interneurons in epileptiform activity associated with developmentally malformed cortex.
Olivia Bowles, MS
Olivia joined the lab as a Masters student in October of 2014. She successfully defended her Masters thesis in the summer of 2016. Olivia has remained in the lab and continues to work on a potential treatment for epileptiform activity associated with cortical microgyria.
Grace Lee - Technician
Grace joined the lab in December of 2015 as a full time technician. She quickly mastered our large and complicated animal colony needs as well as immunohistochemistry, microscope use, and electrophysiological field potential recordings.
Kareem Clark - PhD student in the Dupree Lab
In 2014 we began a collaboration with the Dupree lab that involves Kareem making recordings in their model of multiple sclerosis. Kareem will include the data collected in his PhD thesis.
Nicki Weston - Technician, currently VCU PhD student
Nicki joined the lab in July of 2014 as our main technician. Nicki maintained the animal colony through the winter of 2014 and all of 2015. In 2015 she began her own study examining the potential for inhibitory interneurons to initiate epileptiform activity. She is currently in the VCU Neuroscience PhD program.
Laura Reed - Technician, currently VCU MD student
Laura served as the lab's fulltime technician from May 2013 through the summer of 2014. She learned every technique in the lab during her tenure here. In August of 2014 Laura joined the VCU MD program, but also continued to do experiments in the lab.
Sahaj Mujumdar - MD student researcher
Sahaj joined the lab in the summer of 2016, before entering his first year of medical school at VCU. Sahaj will spend the summer of 2017 working on intracellular signaling of mGluR5 in the malformed cortex.
Technicians that went on to MD or PhD
Undergraduates
Malik Afrifa 2019-2021 Morphology of Chandelier Neurons after mild traumatic brain injury
Ellen Tran 2019-2020 Changes in basal dendrites of pyramidal neurons in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Shrinidhi Kittur 2019-2020 Counts of cFos labeled cells in the malformation surround of the polymicrogyria model
Ali Ebadi 2018-2019 Epileptiform activity in males vs females in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Jacob Little 2018 cFos excitability in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Jeff Evans 2018 Comparing fields in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Shiva Rings 2017-2020 Epileptiform activity in males vs females after P1 and P6 lesions - developmental epilepsy model
Jacklyn Wu 2017 Excitability in somatostatin interneurons in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Miriam Orinda 2016 Effects of Gabapentin on fields in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Bishakha Dhamala 2016-2018 Optogenetic fields in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Chris Conrad 2014-2015 Moving from rats to mice in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy
Nigal Shah 2014-2015 Freeze lesions in mouse neocortex to mimic polymicrogyria
Arjun Arethya 2013 Effects of MPEP on epileptiform fields after visual cortex freeze lesion to mimick polymicrogyria
Xuan Pham 2006 Mefloquine effects on field potentials in the polymicrogyria model of epilepsy