Group Members

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.

Xiao Wang
wangxiao at stanford.edu

Xiao received her bachelor degree in chemistry from Peking University in China (2010) and her Ph.D in chemistry from the University of Chicago (2015). During her graduate work in Prof Chuan He's lab, she investigated the roles of dynamic RNA methylation in post- transcriptional gene regulation. As a postdoc in Prof Deisseroth's lab, she plans to apply or adapt CLARITY to study gene expression patterns underlying brain activity.

Emily Sylwestrak
emily8 at stanford.edu

Emily received her bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. She completed her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego in 2011 in the lab of Anirvan Ghosh, studying the role of adhesion molecules in determining the electrophysiological properties of hippocampal interneurons. She continued working on the molecular control of synapse function at F. Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland before joining the D-lab in 2014. As a postdoc, she plans to work on improving the versatility of the CLARITY technique for visualizing different types of biomolecules.

Huiliang (Evan) Wang
whl0903 at stanford.edu

Evan completed his undergraduate studies in Materials Science from University of Oxford in the UK. He then came to Stanford University for his PhD with Prof Zhenan Bao. His thesis project was on polymer sorting of semiconducting carbon nanotubes and their applications in flexible electronics. As a postdoc in Prof Deisseroth's lab, he is interested in developing better technologies for understanding and controlling brain activity.

Josh Jennings
joshjennings at stanford.edu

Josh received his bachelor's degree in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009, and his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During his graduate work in Garret Stuber's lab, he utilized in vivo cell type-specific electrophysiological and optical methods to monitor the activity dynamics of discrete motivated behavioral states. In the Deisseroth lab, he plans to use optical techniques to selectively monitor and perturb neural network activity patterns.

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.

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.

Talia Lerner
talia.lerner at stanford.edu

Talia received her bachelors 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.

Li Ye
liye02 at stanford.edu

Li received his bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University in China and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. During his Ph.D. work with Bruce Spiegelman, he used chemical biology tools to study the transcriptional control of energy metabolism. In the Deisseroth Lab, he's interested in using brain-wide mapping tools to understand the circuit basis of mouse behavior.

Matthew Lovett-barron
mattlb at stanford.edu

Matt received his bachelor's degree in Psychology from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario in 2009, and his PhD in Neuroscience from Columbia University in 2014. During his graduate studies in Attila Losonczy's lab, Matt used electrophysiology, cell type-specific inactivation, in vivo calcium imaging, and behavioral analysis to discover that dendrite-targeting interneurons in the hippocampus control input-output transformations and the encoding of context during fear learning. In the Deisseroth lab he is using optical methods to investigate brain-wide activity patterns.

Sam Vesuna
svesuna at stanford.edu

Sam received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University in 2012, and is currently a PhD student in the Bioengineering program at Stanford.

Yook Seok Kim
kys8892 at stanford.edu

Yoon received his Bachelor's degree in neurobiology in 2013 and his M.S. in biology in 2014 from Stanford University. During his Masters degree, He studied the biochemistry of postsynaptic and presynaptic membrane proteins in Thomas Sudhof's lab. He is currently in the Bioengineering Ph.D. program at Stanford, and is co-advised by Dr. Brian Kobilka. He is working to understand mechanisms of different opsins and develop new tools for neuroscience research.

William Allen
wallen at stanford.edu

Website

Will received an ScB in Applied Mathematics-Biology from Brown University in 2012, an MPhil in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge in 2013, and is currently a PhD student in the Neurosciences program at Stanford. He is interested in developing and applying genetic, optical, and computational tools to measure and manipulate neural circuit dynamics. He is coadvised by Prof. Liqun Luo in the Department of Biology.

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

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 as a MD/PhD student. He's currently working with the effort to engineer opsin function and delivery and investigating social behavior.

Kelly Zalocusky
kellyz 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 her bachelors degree in molecular biology and genetics from Istanbul Technical University. She then completed a masters in cognitive science studying decision making under uncertainty in humans, and arrived Stanford University as a Fulbright scholar and joined Parvizi Lab to learn intracranial electrophysiology recordings from epilepsy patients. She is currently a neurosciences PhD candidate at Stanford. In the Deisseroth Lab, she is interested in engineering of the optogenetic tools, and revealing and manipulating the neural circuitry underlying autism.

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.

Samuel Yang
samuely at stanford.edu

 |  Website

Sam received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical Engineering department at Stanford. He is interested in developing novel computational optical imaging and stimulation methods.

Noah Young
npyoung at stanford.edu

Noah holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Johns Hopkins University where he majored in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics & Statistics. Today he works on novel neural stimulation methods, whole-brain imaging of neural dynamics in larval zebrafish, and computational tools for the big data problems that arise from volumetric neural imaging datasets.

Ariane Tom
ariane.tom at stanford.edu

 |  Website

Ariane received her B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from Stanford University and is currently a Ph.D. student in Bioengineering. She is interested in developing biomaterials with unique optical, conductive, and morphological properties to create improved neural interfaces. Ariane joined the Deisseroth lab in Fall 2013, and is co-advised by Dr. Zhenan Bao.

Isaac Kauvar
ikauvar at stanford.edu

 |  Website

Isaac received a B.S. in Engineering Physics with a specialty in photonics fro Stanford, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering with a focus on imaging and optimization, also from Stanford, and is currently a PhD student in the Electrical Engineering program at Stanford. He is coadvised by Prof. Gordon Wetzstein in EE.

Cynthia Delacruz
cdelacruz at stanford.edu

Program Manager, CNCAdministrative Services Manager, Deisseroth Lab