Deisseroth Lab, Stanford University

Group Members

Principal Investigator

KARL DEISSEROTH
deissero at stanford.edu

Karl received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1992, his PhD from Stanford in 1998, and his MD from Stanford in 2000. He completed postdoctoral training, medical internship, and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and he was board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 2006. He tries to find spare time for flyfishing.

Post-docs

	MELISSA WARDEN mwarden at stanford.edu Melissa received her A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Systems Neuroscience from MIT. During her graduate work with Earl Miller in systems neurophysiology, she studied the neural basis of multi-item short term memory in the prefrontal cortex.
	TOM DAVIDSON tjd at stanford.edu Tom received his bachelor's degree in the history of science from Harvard, and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from MIT. In his graduate work (in the lab of Matt Wilson), he studied spontaneous memory reactivation in the hippocampus of animals as they explored large environments. He joined the D-lab in the fall of 2009, and is developing dynamic optogenetic stimulation methods for the study of memory in behaving animals.
	KWANGHUN CHUNG khchung at stanford.edu
	AVISHEK ADHIKARI avishek at stanford.edu Avishek received his Bachelor's in Science degree from the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. From 2005-2010 he worked at Columbia University with Prof. Joshua Gordon and Prof. Rene Hen studying the activity of the hippocampal-medial prefrontal cortical pathway in mice during anxiety. He joined Stanford in 2011, to continue his studies on the neural circuits underlying fear and anxiety by combining in vivo electrophysiology and optogenetics. Outside the lab Avi enjoys playing guitar, drawing, and eating seafood. http://scbe.stanford.edu/profiles/Avishek_Adhikari
	AARON ANDALMAN aandal at stanford.edu Aaron received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Stanford in 1999 and his Ph.D. in neuroscience from MIT in 2009. During graduate school he studied the function of basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits in motor learning behaviors. As a postdoc, he is interested in studying the principles of reward learning using optical methods for observing and manipulating neural circuits. Outside of lab he enjoys piano, tennis, squash, basketball, and recreational programming.
	PAUL KALANITHI pkalanithi at stanford.edu Paul completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford in English and Human Biology (Neuroscience). He received an M.Phil in History & Philosophy of Science from Cambridge before starting medical school at Yale. During medical school, he quantified interneuron populations of the basal ganglia in postmortem Tourette Syndrome patients in the lab of Flora Vaccarino. He is currently a neurosurgery resident at Stanford, and works in both the Shenoy and Deisseroth labs, using optogenetics in the primate motor system.
	TALIA LERNER talia.lerner at stanford.edu Talia received her bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale in 2006 and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCSF in 2011. Her graduate work (in Anatol Kreitzer’s lab) focused on understanding the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in the striatum, in particular the regulation of this plasticity by dopamine and adenosine. In the Deisseroth Lab, she is exploring the role of basal ganglia circuit function and dopamine signaling in the development and expression of habitual behavior.
	SOO YEUN LEE synlee at stanford.edu Soo received her BA in Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. She worked as a bioinformatics associate in industry and a molecular biology research assistant at Stanford, before continuing onto her PhD at UC Irvine. Her graduate thesis in Ivan Soltesz's lab focused on the cell-type specific organization and modulation of GABAergic circuits, with an emphasis in neuropeptide signaling pathways. As a postdoc, she is interested in combining her molecular and electrophysiological background to pursue new opsin design and engineering strategies.
	ANDRE BERNDT berndt at stanford.edu Andre Berndt studied Biophysics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and received his PhD in 2011. He studied the molecular mechanism of Channelrhodopsins and designed variants with new features in Peter Hegemann's lab. He continues this work in Karl Deisseorth's lab in order to extend the optogenetic toolbox.
	RAJU TOMER tomerr at stanford.edu
	JAMES MARSHEL jmarshel at stanford.edu Jim received a dual Bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology-Neurobiology and Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego in 2011. During his graduate work in Ed Callaway's lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Jim developed and applied tools for revealing single microcircuits in mammalian cortex. He studied functional circuit processing throughout the visual system, including thalamus, primary visual cortex and extrastriate visual areas using in vivo two-photon imaging, calcium sensors and viral tracers. In the Deisseroth Lab, Jim is applying novel methods for in vivo single cell optogenetic stimulation to dissect cortical circuit computations during sensation and behavior. He aims to understand the role of local circuit plasticity and recurrent connections in driving cortical circuit output and behavior.
	PRIYA RAJASETHUPATHY priya4 at stanford.edu Priya received her B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and her M.D./Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Columbia University. During her graduate work with Eric Kandel, she studied small RNA- and epigenetic- mechanisms underlying cellular memory. In her post-doc, she plans to study circuit level mechanisms in the encoding and retrieval of behavioral memory.
	CONOR LISTON cliston at stanford.edu Conor received a bachelor's degree in psychology and biology from Harvard College and completed his MD/PhD and psychiatry residency at the Rockefeller University and Cornell Medical College. During residency, Conor conducted in vivo imaging experiments in the laboratory of Wen-Biao Gan (NYU), investigating how circadian oscillations in glucocorticoid stress hormones regulate dendritic spine remodeling during learning. He is currently a postdoc in the Deisseroth Lab and is studying the relationship between spine plasticity, cortical circuit dynamics, and behavior.

Graduate Students

	LOGAN GROSENICK logang at stanford.edu Logan received bachelors degrees with honors in Biology and Psychology from Stanford, and a Masters in Statistics from Stanford. He is currently a Ph. D. candidate in the Neurosciences Program and a trainee at the Stanford Center for Mind, Brain, and Computation. He is interested in developing and applying novel computational and imaging techniques for observing, controlling, and understanding neuronal circuit dynamics. http://www.stanford.edu/~logang
	LISA GUNAYDIN gunaydin at stanford.edu
	JOANNA MATTIS jmattis at stanford.edu Joanna received a BS in Biology from Yale in 2006 and an M.Phil in Physiology, Development, and Neuroscience from Cambridge University in 2007. She is in the MD/PhD program (MSTP) and the Neurosciences Ph.D Program at Stanford.
	LIEF FENNO lfenno at stanford.edu Lief received his Bachelors degree in neurobiology from Harvard, where he worked at the intersection of human embryonic stem cells and Parkinson's disease. Afterward, he continued this endevor at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston before joining the Stanford Neuroscience program. He's currently working with the effort to engineer opsins with novel functions and investigating depression.
	ROHIT PRAKASH ropra at stanford.edu Rohit received his B.S. in Physics and Philosophy at UNC-Chapel Hill. He worked at the NIH for a brief time afterwards and now is an M.D./Ph.D. student in the neuroscience program. He is currently working on the two-photon.
	SUNG-YON KIM sungyonkim at stanford.edu Sung-Yon received his Bachelors degrees in Biological Sciences and Chemistry from Seoul National University in South Korea in 2009. During the course of college he pursued research in the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, where he worked on electrical stimulation of the thalamus. Currently, Sung-Yon is in the Neurosciences Ph.D. Program at Stanford.
	KELLY ZALOCUSKY kellyz at stanford.edu
	WERAPONG (JOE) GOO wgoo at stanford.edu
	EMILY FERENCZI ferenczi at stanford.edu Emily studied medicine at Cambridge and Oxford Universities in England and began her residency in neurology in London before coming to Stanford to do a PhD in Neuroscience in 2010. She is interested in combining optogenetics, electrophysiology and imaging techniques to study how the normal brain works and how it becomes disordered in neurological and neuropsychiatric disease.
	ASLIHAN SELIMBEYOGLU aslihans at stanford.edu Aslihan received his Bachelors degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Istanbul Technical University. She then completed a masters in neurosciences, and arrived Stanford University as a visiting researcher before she joined to the neuroscience PhD program. She is interested in engineering new optogenetic tools and their use to study cognitive function.
	CHRISTINA KIM kimck at stanford.edu Tina received an A.B. in Molecular Biology and a minor in Quantitative and Computational Neuroscience at Princeton University. She is currently in the Neurosciences Ph.D. Program at Stanford. She is interested in using optical measurements and perturbation of neuronal activity to study circuit dynamics in awake, behaving animals.
	VANESSA BURNS vburns at stanford.edu Vanessa is part of the Chemical and Systems Biology PhD program at Stanford. She received a B.S. in Bioengineering from Caltech with a focus on Systems and Synthetic Biology.
	SAM YANG samuely at stanford.edu Sam is interested in developing novel computational imaging methods, and is currently in the Electrical Engineering Ph.D. program at Stanford.

Staff

CYNTHIA DELACRUZ - Executive Assistant
cdelacruz at stanford.edu

Research Assistants


CHARU RAMAKRISHNAN	SALLY PAK	CHELSEY PERRY

JULIE MIRZABEKOV	HALEY SWANSON

Undergrads


MINSUK HYUN		JENELLE WALLACE		ISAAC KAUVAR

Alumni


RAGHU YABALURI M.S. 2005	NANDHINI NANDIWADA SANTHANAM M.S. 2007	YUQING GONG M.S. 2006

ED BOYDEN POSTDOC 2005-2006	CATHY HAN M.S. 2007	VICKI PARENTE B.S. 2007

MYRIAM CORDEY POSTDOC 2005-2006	ALBRECHT STROH POSTDOC 2006-2007	ALEX ARAVANIS POSTDOC 2006-2007

MANI ROY SCIENTIST 2005-2007	ELLORA KARMARKER UNDERGRAD 2005-2007	LESLIE MELTZER GRAD STUDENT 2004-2008

FENG ZHANG GRAD STUDENT 2004-2009	LIPING WANG POST-DOC 2005-2007	JIN HUNG LEE POST-DOC 2007-2009

RAAG AIRAN GRAD STUDENT 2005-2009	RAMIN PASHAIE POST-DOC 2007-2009	BRET SCHNEIDER STAFF SCIENTIST 2006-2010

VIKAAS SOHAL POST-DOC 2006-2010	RAGU VIJAYKUMAR GRAD STUDENT 2006-2010	HANNAH BERNSTEIN UNDERGRAD 2007-2010

HOSNIYA ZARABI UNDERGRAD 2008-2010	MATT BRODSKY UNDERGRAD 2009-2010	HSING-CHEN TSAI GRAD STUDENT 2006-2010

POLINA ANIKEEVA POST-DOC 2008-2010	MURTAZA MOGRI GRAD STUDENT 2006-2011	REMY DURAND GRAD STUDENT 2007-2011

ILKA DIESTER POST-DOC 2008-2011	OFER YIZHAR POST-DOC 2008-2011	KAY TYE POST-DOC 2008-2011

DAVID LIN POST-DOC 2010-2012	ILANA WITTEN POST-DOC 2008-2012	ANSELM LEVSKAYA POST-DOC 2009-2011

NANCY WANG RESEARCH ASSISTANT 2011-2012	VIVIANA GRADINARU GRADUATE STUDENT 2006-2010	KIM THOMPSON POST-DOC 2007-2012

INBAL GOSHEN POST-DOC 2008-2012	CHRIS LEE-MESSER POST-DOC 2009-2012	DIVYA CHANDER POST-DOC 2009-2012

CHRIS TOWNE POST-DOC 2010-2012	RYAN SQUIRE GRAD STUDENT 2008-2012	JOEL FINKELSTEIN RESEARCH ASSISTANT 2009-2011

SANDHIYA KALYANASUNDARAM RESEARCH ASSISTANT 2010-2012	ZHIQIANG CHEN RESEARCH ASSISTANT 2008-2012