MeCo Lab Team
Sebnem Nur Tuncdemir, PhD
Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the UConn Health. Her research investigates how the neural circuits that encode specific features of contexts are organized in adults and to elucidate the developmental mechanisms underlying their formation. She is particularly interested in forming an integrated view of hippocampal circuit function from the activity of its component cell types at multiple time scales, and across the lifespan. This will provide new biomarkers for disorders characterized by impaired cognitive discrimination such as PTSD and depression.
Andres Daniel Grosmark, PhD
Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the UConn Health. Andres is a systems neuroscientist interested in understanding the circuit mechanisms which determines why some memories are kept for life-time while others are quickly forgotten. In particular, he is fascinated by the question of how diverse neural circuits and processes, including those occurring during distinct behavioral states, uniquely contribute to long-term memory formation. In turn, a better appreciation for this diversity in memory-forming mechanisms will provide unique insights that can be leveraged to understand and develop targeted treatments for neuropathologies which affect specific parts of the memory formation process, such as those seen in schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and age-related mild cognitive impairments.
Anvar Sariev, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow. Anvar completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Sebastien Royer at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. His long-term research goal is to understand how ideas emerge and evolve in the form of sequential patterned activity of complex neural networks.
Oluwatomisin Faniyan, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow. Tomi completed his PhD under the supervision of Drs. de Vivo and Bellesi at the Brain and Sleep Research Laboratory, University of Camerino, Italy. His long-term objective is to investigate the roles of various cell types within the dentate gyrus in context discrimination and to elucidate how sleep loss during adolescence may alter their functioning, potentially contributing to behavioral deficits.
Ceren Akgul, MSc
PhD Student. Ceren earned her BA in Psychology from Bilkent University and an MSc in Cognitive Psychology from the Middle East Technical University. She is currently pursing her PhD in Biomedical Science with a concentration in Neuroscience. While in the MeCo lab, she is studying PTSD and fear conditioning in rodents.
Kelsey Walsh, BA
PhD Student. Kelsey has a BA in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. They are in an MD, PhD program here at UCHC in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in Neuroscience. Kelsey is currently studying norepinephrine projections to various brain structures while subjects are engaged in learning tasks.
Naveed Ghani, MSc
Research Assistant. Naveed holds a BA in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and a MSc in Medical Sciences from Boston University. Prior to joining MeCo Lab, he studied molecular substrates of drug addiction in the laboratories of Dr. Heng-ye Man and Dr. Kathleen Kantak. He is currently studying neurobiological mechanisms of long-term memory consolidation.
Nicholas Kats, BS.
Research Assistant. Nick holds BS in Biomedical Engineering and in Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining MeCo Lab, he helped design biological controllers towards treatment of spinal cord injury at the HEPIUS Lab. He is currently studying neurobiological mechanisms of contextual memory encoding while also managing the lab’s mouse colony.
Quinn Fong
Undergraduate Assistant. Quinn is majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology at UConn. As an IBACS grant recipient and previous UConn Health Research Program scholar, they are studying norepinephrine projections from the locus coeruleus to other structures within the brain in relation to memory and learning.
Anika Agrawal
Undergraduate Assistant. Anika is majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology at UConn, and is part of UConn's Special Program in Medicine. As an IBACS grant recipient, she is examining how early-life experiences influence hippocampal circuits during critical periods of memory formation in mice.
Aditi Malpure
Undergraduate Assistant. Aditi is majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Psychology at UConn, and a part of UConn’s Special Program in Medicine. As SURF scholar, she is currently examining neurobiological mechanisms of memory generalization to gain further insight into the mechanisms of PTSD in hippocampal and cortical regions.
Ananya Jayaram
Undergraduate Assistant. Ananya is a majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology at UConn. She is assisting in experiments dissecting neurobiological mechanisms of contextual memory encoding
Kathryn Samson
Undergraduate Assistant. Kathryn is majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology with a minor in Mathematics at UConn. She is currently assisting in experiments that investigate the effects of early-life experiences on the hippocampal circuits of mice.
