Department of Neuroscience News

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Kara Marshall has received the 2026 McKnight Scholars Award! 

The McKnight Scholar Awards are granted to scientists in the early stages of establishing their own independent laboratories & research careers & who have demonstrated a commitment to neuroscience. Marshall’s team will use PIEZO ion channels, sensors of mechanical force in mammals, as tools to specifically probe the contribution of internal mechanosensation in shaping emotion states, particularly in the context of fear and anxiety. By doing so, the team will more fully define how the body and brain are intertwined to shape behavior.

Dr. Melanie Samuel has been named Director of the Development, Disease Models & Therapeutics Graduate Program. The DDMT Ph.D. Graduate Program trains innovative, dedicated, passionate scientists who want to bridge the divide between basic scientific research and medicine. Dr. Samuel is committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists, both in her lab and in the Neuroscience community, and one of her greatest satisfactions as a scientist is seeing her trainees succeed. 

It is with great pleasure that we announce the promotion of Dr. Jacob Reimer to Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Reimer joined the Department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 2015 and was then recruited as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 2018. In 2022, he became an Affiliate Faculty member at Rice University, and in 2025, was appointed as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Reimer has made significant and sustained contributions to the field through his groundbreaking research, technical innovation, and deep biological insight. His work has established him as a leader in neuroscience and a valued member of the BCM academic community. 

We are proud to recognize Dr. Matthew McGinley for being promoted to a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. McGinley joined the department of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 2016 as an Assistant Professor and Investigator at the Duncan Neurological Research Institute, and in 2017 was appointed as an Adjunct Professor for the Department of Engineering at Rice University. Over the past ten years, Dr. McGinley has demonstrated sustained excellence and dedication across research, education, and service, making meaningful contributions to the Department of Neuroscience and the broader academic community. 

Dr. Jeannie Chin has been named The Vivian L. Smith Endowed Chair in Neuroscience IV. This position is one of five endowed faculty positions in the Department of Neuroscience, created through the generosity of the late Vivian L. Smith. This honor reflects not only the international recognition her research has achieved, but also the scientific rigor and innovative ideas emerging from her lab that have changed how the Alzheimer's disease field understands the brain changes that occur during disease progression. 

Dr. Matt Rasband is a professor, and the Vivian L. Smith Endowed Chair in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. He views it as both a privilege and a responsibility to effectively train the next generation of scientists. Dr. Rasband serves as the director of the Neuroscience Graduate Program and has managed an NINDS T32 training grant since 2009. Over the years, he has mentored 22 Ph.D. students in his laboratory and 15 postdoctoral researchers, in addition to serving on more than 100 Ph.D. thesis advisory committees. Many of his former trainees now lead their own research labs. Thank you, Dr. Rasband, for all the important work you continue to do!

Dr. Jacob Reimer is leading a collaborative research project to simplify the brain proofreading process with the development of a software package called NEURD, short for "NEURal Decomposition." 

“The primary goal of this collaboration has been to uncover the importance of wiring in the brain, to reveal the biological ‘secret sauce’ that enables the brain's extraordinary problem-solving capabilities, which remain beyond the reach of current machine learning systems".

We are proud to announce that Dr. Jeannie Chin has been promoted to the rank of tenured professor in the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Chin joined BCM in 2015 and has since made outstanding contributions in the areas of neuroscience, specifically with her Alzheimer's research. Dr. Chin has become a highly respected member of our academic community. Throughout her career, Dr. Chin has mentored countless students and junior colleagues. Her work continues to shape the future of neuroscience, both within and beyond our institution. 

We are excited to welcome Dr. David Lipschutz as our new tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California and completed postdoctoral research in Applied Mathematics at Brown University and Electrical Engineering at the Technion. At the Flatiron Institute with the Simons Foundation, he collaborated on Computational Neuroscience with Dr. Dmitri Chklovskii and Dr. Eero Simoncelli. Dr. Lipschutz’s research focuses on developing mathematical frameworks to understand how biological and artificial neural networks learn and adapt. In his lab at BCM, he aims to advance these theories and analyze neural and behavioral data from experiments. Welcome, Dr. Lipschutz!

The labs of Dr. Jiang and Dr. McGinley have made significant strides in auditory research by identifying diverse cell types in the cochlear nucleus, a vital brainstem region responsible for processing auditory information. These groundbreaking findings have been published in Nature Communications, highlighting the importance of their work in understanding auditory processing mechanisms. 

Publication title: Molecular logic for cellular specializations that initiate the auditory parallel processing pathways

The Brown Foundation Chair in Neuroscience was established in 2017 by The Brown Foundation, Inc. Dr. Javier Medina’s research program aims to understand the role of the cerebellum in the neural control of movement. His work focuses on investigating how neural circuits use supervised learning approaches to make predictions. This work has implications for understanding and treating a wide range of motor and cognitive brain disorders that have been linked to deficits in cerebellar function. Congratulations, Dr. Medina! 

The Vivian L. Smith Endowed Professorship in Neuroscience was established in 2013 through the generosity of Vivian L. Smith. Dr. François St-Pierre is a McNair Scholar who has established expertise in developing innovative new technologies for imaging biological systems focusing on the brain and cancer. His work, funded by multiple federal mechanisms and private foundations, has expanded beyond developing voltage indicators, helping to revolutionize protein engineering with his pioneering single-cell screening techniques, achieving optimization speeds vastly surpassing traditional methods. Congratulations, Dr. St-Pierre!

We are delighted to announce that our newest tenure-track faculty member, Dr. Jay Hennig, has joined the Department of Neuroscience as an assistant professor. Dr. Hennig obtained his Ph.D. in Neural Computation and Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard University with Dr. Samuel Gershman. Dr. Hennig's research focuses on bridging theory and statistical analysis of neural population activity and behavior. In his lab at BCM, he plans to continue developing a framework using artificial neural networks, statistical analyses, and dynamical systems theory to study neural representations of reinforcement learning. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Hennig to the neuroscience community and wishing him every success.

Dr. Kara Marshall, assistant professor of neuroscience and McNair Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine has been named to the 2024 class of Rita Allen Foundation Scholars. She is among seven researchers nationwide who were chosen in recognition of their ambitious research to advance knowledge on the development, prevention and treatment of human diseases. This foundation celebrates early-career leaders in the biomedical sciences whose research holds exceptional promise for revealing new pathways to advance human health. 

Dr. Mingshan Xue, an associate professor of neuroscience and the Caroline DeLuca Scholar at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Institute, has been honored with the 2024 STXBP1 Impact Award. This award acknowledges significant contributions to the pursuit of improved treatments and a better future for individuals with STXBP1-related disorders.

Dr. Xue's research on STXBP1-related disorders began in 2014 when he established a side project investigating the rare mutation. STXBP1 is considered one of the most common genetic causes of epilepsy. Learn more about Dr. Xue's research story.