The Neuroscience Seminar Series continues to draw distinguished leaders and scientists from across the United States and around the globe. Established over 25 years ago, this program stands as a cornerstone of the vibrant academic environment within our department. Each week, our seminars bring together investigators, postdocs, and graduate students, fostering scientific discussions, collaborations, and innovation while strengthening the local neuroscience community.
The 2025-2026 Seminar Series is set to commence on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025, and will run until Friday, May 29, 2026. Seminars are scheduled every Friday from 11 a.m. to noon (CST), unless noted otherwise.
All members of the larger neuroscience community at the Texas Medical Center are invited to attend our seminars. To receive the speaker schedules and weekly reminders, please reach out to Ms. Vanessa Galvan at vanessa.galvan@bcm.edu.
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: Synaptic Organizers - dynamic complexes for cell recognition, synapse development and circuit assembly
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: Intercellular signaling through soluble ectodomains at neuronal synapses: from basic biology to biomarkers and treatments.
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: Cortical Connectomics.
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: SCN2A-mediated autism and epilepsy: from mouse and hiPSCs models to genetic medicine
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 neuroimaging and behavioral/psychophysical experiments to explore these topics.
Seminar Title: Episodic and Statistical Learning in the Hippocampus.
Faculty Host: Dorina Papageorgiou, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences 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: Convergent comodulation: Rules and influence on circuit output.
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. 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: A gut sense for microbes.
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 understanding the developmental and adult patterns of synaptic connections underlying the retinal circuits, and determining how the specific wiring patterns impact visual processing.
Seminar Title: Context-dependent visual processing in the retina
Faculty Host: Samuel Wu, Ph.D., Professor and Camille and Raymond Hankamer Chair in Ophthalmology 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: A neural population journey from visual cortex to the clinic
Faculty Host: Jeff Yau, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.
Feb. 6, 2026: Qiancheng Zhao, Ph.D.
11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek. Dr. Qiancheng Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Endocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Zhao’s lab is interested in exploring the molecular and cellular mechanisms, as well as the neurocircuitry underlying our interoception.
Seminar Title: Making Sense of Internal Senses: The Vagal Body-to-Brain Axis and Beyond
Faculty Host: Kara Marshall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.
11 a.m. in McMillian Auditorium at DeBakey. Dr. Michael Häusser is a Professor of Neuroscience at University College London and Director of School of Biomedical Sciences and Interim Director of the School of Biomedical Engineering at University of Hong Kong. Dr. Häusser’s lab is interested in understanding computations in neural circuits of the mammalian brain.
Seminar Title: All-optical interrogation of mammalian neural circuits
Faculty Host: Francois St-Pierre, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.
11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek. 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: Neuromodulation at Scale: Tools for Human Circuit Neuroscience
Faculty Host: Sameer Sheth, M.D., Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine.
11 a.m. in Room M112 at DeBakey. Dr. Xin Duan is a 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: Translating Transcriptomics to Connectomics at Retinotectal Synapses
Faculty Host: Xiaolong Jiang, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine.
11 a.m. in Room N315 Auditorium at Alkek. 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: Neuronal Engagement Orchestrates Pediatric Brain Tumor Growth
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 N315 Auditorium at Alkek. Dr. Consuelo Walss-Bass is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Director of Psychiatric Genetics Program and UTHealth Brain Collection for Research in Psychiatric Disorders, and Co-Director of the Translational Psychiatry Program at UTHealth McGovern Medical School. Dr. Walss-Bass focuses her research on understanding psychiatric disorders at the molecular level, utilizing genomic and proteomic approaches in human and animal models to correlate genetic/epigenetic modifications with cellular function and brain to understand the mechanisms that are involved in the development and expression of mental illness and behavior.
Seminar Title: Patient-Derived Mechanistic Studies of Drug Exposure: Beyond Substance Use Disorder
Faculty Host: Elizabeth Zuniga-Sanchez, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine.
11 a.m. in Room M112 at DeBakey. 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.
11 a.m. in Room N315 Auditorium at Alkek. Dr. Shuo Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at Washington University St. Louis. Dr. Wang’s Neuroscience lab combines multimodal and advanced measurement techniques with sophisticated computational approaches to understand the neural mechanisms and neural computations underlying social attention, face processing, emotion, memory and decision making.
Seminar Title: Computational Single-Neuron Mechanisms Linking Perception and Memory in the Human Brain
Faculty Host: Benjamin Yost Hayden, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine.
11 a.m. in N315 Auditorium at Alkek. 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: Neuromodulation Strategies for Prevention and Treatment of Cognitive Comorbidities
Faculty Host: Barna Dudok, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine.