Neuroscience Seminar Series Academic Year 2025-2026

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Laura DeNardo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology in David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  Dr. DeNardo’s research is to understand the assembly, organization, and function of mPFC circuits that contribute to adaptive behaviors. 

Seminar Title: Neural Circuits Underlying Long Term Memory Across the Life Span

Dr. DeNardo’s seminar is hosted by postdoc Jeffrey Zhu, who trains in Dr. Melanie Samuel’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine.

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Madeleine Oudin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University School of Engineering.  Dr. Oudin’s research is to investigate the role of the various components of the tumor microenvironment in driving tumor metastasis and drug resistance, using an interdisciplinary approach that will combine cell biology, microfluidics, intravital imaging, system biology, and implantable devices.

Seminar Title: Development of Splice-Switching Antisense Oligonucleotides for the Treatment of Development Epileptic Encephalopathies 

Faculty Host: Edward Cooper, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Molecular & Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine.

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Colleen McClung is a Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh.  Dr. McClung’s research focuses on the role of circadian rhythms in the development and treatment of psychiatric disorders. 

Seminar Title: Circadian Genes, Rhythms and the Biology of Psychiatric Disorders

Faculty Host: Vaishnav Krishnan, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Paul Jenkins is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.  Dr. Jenkins’s research focuses on basic cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying complex neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental diseases, such as bipolar disorder and autism spectrum disorders, using confocal microscopy, molecular and cell biology, transgenic mouse models, electrophysiology, and biochemistry.  

Seminar Title: Molecular Convergence of High-Risk Autism-Associated Genes, ANK2 and SCN2A, in the Control of Dendritic Excitability

Faculty Host: Matt Rasband, Ph.D., Professor and Vivian L. Smith Endowed Chair in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in Room M112 at DeBakey.  Dr. Gabrielle Rudenko is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at UTMB Health.  Dr. Rudenko’s research is working to understand on a molecular level how neurexins, their partners, as well as number of other synaptic organizers recognize, bind, and arrange different synaptic partners in the synaptic cleft impacting synaptic function.    

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.

Faculty Host: Mingshan Xue, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Molecular & Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine.     

11 a.m. in Room M112 at DeBakey.  Dr. Peter Penzes is the Director of the Center for Autism and Neurodevelopment and Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern.  Dr. Penzes’s research focuses on signal transduction networks that regulate the structural and functional plasticity of excitatory synapses.   

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Kimberley Tolias, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in Room M112 at DeBakey.  Dr. Forrest Collman is an Associate Director of Informatics at the Allen Institute for Brain Science within the technology department.  Dr. Allen presently co-leads the electron microscopy connectomics project at the Allen, where he helps manage the computational tools and infrastructure to support processing the petascale data collected by the team.    He is also focused on helping develop a next generations of data products about connectivity in the brain that make the data accessible and useful for experimental and computational neuroscientists alike.

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Jacob Reimer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in Room M112 at DeBakey.  Dr. Yang Yang is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue University.  Dr. Yang’s research aims to advance pharmacogenomics and precision medicine to treat genetic brain disorders.

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Yudong Gao, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in Room 111A at Cullen.  Dr. Nick Turk-Browne is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University.  Dr. Turk-Browne’s research is in how we see (perception), how we control what we see and how it controls us (attention), and how we store what we see in our heads (learning and memory), and especially in how all of these parts of the mind interact.  We use a combination of neroimaging and behavioral/psychophyisical experiments to explore these topics.  

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Yudong Gao, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Farzan Nadim is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences at New Jersey Institute of Technology.  Dr. Nadim’s research is how neuronal circuits in the central nervous system produce behavior, and how these behaviors are modified by neuromodulatory chemicals.  

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Fabrizio Gabbiani, Ph.D., M.A., Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.      

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Anne Schaefer is a Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Neuroscience, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, and Co-director of the Center of Glial Biology at the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  Dr. Schaefer’s research focuses on identifying the epigenetic basis of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders.    

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Dr. Schaefer’s seminar is hosted by graduate student Victoria Cuevas, who trains in Dr. Melanie Samuel’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine.     

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Maya Kaelberer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Arizona.  Dr. Kaelberer’s research focuses on a new understanding of how the gut senses and responds to the complex composition of food, going beyond traditional calorie counting.     

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Shelly Buffington, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Center for Precision Environmental Health, Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Wei Wei is a Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago.  Dr. Wei’s research focuses on a new understanding of how the gut senses and responds to the complex composition of food, going beyond traditional calorie counting.     

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Shelly Buffington, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Center for Precision Environmental Health, Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Marlene Cohen is a Professor of Neurobiology and Neuroscience Institute at the University of Chicago.  Dr. Cohen’s lab studies how the nervous system works, how it is built, how it operates on cellular and systems levels, how drugs affect it, and how it is damaged in neurodegenerative diseases.  

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Jeff Yau, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek.  Dr. Mark Harnett is an Associate Professor & Graduate Officer in the Department of Brian & Cognitive Sciences at MIT McGovern Institute.  Dr. Harnett’s lab studies how mammalian neurons process information and perform the complex computations that underlie behavior. 

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Dr. Harnett’s seminar is hosted by graduate student, Fish Kunxun Qian, who trains in Dr. Jeffrey Magee’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine.    

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Philip Sabes is a Professor Emeritus, Physiology at UCSF.  Dr. Sabes’s lab studied how sensory and motor experience shapes movement control and the underlying brain circuits.   

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Sameer Sheth, M.D., Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Jennifer Gelinas is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Anatomy and Neurobiology at University of California Irvine.  Dr. Gelinas’s lab studies neural networks that mediate these cognitive functions in developing and mature brains.     

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.  

Faculty Host: Barna Dudok, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Indira M. Raman is a Bill and Gayle Cook Professor, Chair in the Departments of Systems Neuroscience, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience.  Dr. Raman’s studies Ionic mechanisms of neuronal excitability, information in the nervous system is transmitted by electrical signals within neurons and by chemical signals between neurons.       

Seminar Title: To Be Announced.   

Dr. Raman’s seminar is hosted by Postdoctoral Associate, Michelle Ann Land, trains in Dr. Francois St-Pierre’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Xin Duan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at UCSF.  Dr. Duan’s lab focuses on reconstruct neural circuits and restore normal function in the setting of neuronal injury.       

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Xiaolong Jiang, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Theanne Griffith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology at University of California, Davis Health.  Dr. Griffith’s lab researches the ability to navigate our physical environment relies not only on the detection of external cues, but also an accurate sense of internal spatial awareness.

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Kara Marshall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Brett Mensh Founded Optimize Science, a science-communication consulting firm which has helped many investigators with presentations, paper and grant-writing, with over half of submitted grant applications being funded.  Dr. Mensh continues to advise other laboratories, and startup companies and continues to practice medicine in northern California.  

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Shelly Buffington, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Center for Precision Environmental Health, Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. David Gutmann is a Donald O. Schnuck Family Professor Department of Neurology and Director, Neurofibromatosis Center at Washington University School of Medicine.  Dr. Gutmann’s lab focuses on discovering the genomic, genetic, cellular and molecular determinants that cause nervous system dysfunction by leveraging a combination of novel genetically engineered mice, human induced pluripotent stem cells, bioinformatic approaches, and multi-omic analysis methodologies.  

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Hyun-Kyoung Lee, M.S., Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Uri Hasson is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University.  Dr. Hasson’s lab investigates the underlying neural basis of brain-to-brain human communication, natural language processing, and language acquisition in children as they materialize in real-world contexts.    

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Benjamin Yost Hayden, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Asya Rolls is a Professor in the Department of Life Science at Tel Aviv University.  Dr. Rolls’s lab is a neuroimmunology research lab studying how the nervous system regulates immunity.      

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Kara Marshall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.   

11 a.m. in PENDING.  Dr. Pascal Kaeser is a Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Kaeser’s lab is interested in synaptic transmission and Neuromodulation.  The lab dissects mechanisms of the signaling machines for various neurotransmitters and ask how these transmission systems tune microcircuit function.     

Seminar Title: To Be Announced. 

Faculty Host: Melanie Samuel, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine.