The early stages of a scientist’s career—including the time spent as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, and non-tenured faculty—are characterized by great vulnerability, and publishing presents unique challenges and pressures. The Early Career Researcher Advisory Board was created in late 2023 to provide opportunities for these researchers to gain insights into the process of scientific publishing, particularly into peer review. At the same time, JNeurosci’s Editorial Board will have the opportunity to learn about the specific needs of early career researchers and how JNeurosci can best support these, and thereby help to shape the future of the journal.
This Board is one of several programs intended to specifically support early career researchers, including the Reviewer Mentor Program and Journal Club.
Board Members
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Temitope Awe
Temitope Awe is currently in the advanced stages of his PhD program at Illinois State University, where he focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying sensory processing. His research centers on understanding the molecular basis of magnetoreception. Using C. elegans as a model organism, he aims to uncover the key genetic and cellular components involved in magnetoreception. -
Xi Chen
Xi Chen is currently a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Berkeley, and an incoming Assistant Professor in Integrative Neuroscience of Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University starting January 2024. Her research focuses on brain and behavioral changes in aging, encompassing a broad spectrum ranging from successful aging to early Alzheimer's disease (AD). Using multi-modal neuroimaging methods such as MRI and PET, her work investigates the relationships between AD pathology, brain structure, and brain function, and their collective influence on cognitive aging. The goal is to discern and elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive deficits in normal aging and AD. -
Swati Gupta
Swati Gupta is an instructor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research primarily focuses on unraveling the neurobiological foundations of neurodegenerative diseases, and exploring their causes, mechanisms, and trajectories. Her current research is centered on AMPAR dynamics at corticostriatal synapses, investigating alterations in mice expressing the prevalent Lrrk2-G2019S genetic mutation linked to Parkinson's, with the aim of identifying early disease mechanisms that could provide potential therapeutic avenues. Her long-term goal is to uncover fresh perspectives on the causes and mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, ultimately driving the development of impactful treatments and interventions in the field. -
Fei-Yang Huang
Fei-Yang Huang is a Wellcome Trust Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK. His research focuses on the neurophysiology of reward processing, reinforcement learning, and economic decision-making. He earned his medical degree and a minor degree in Economics from National Taiwan University before completing his PhD in Neurophysiology at the University of Cambridge, UK. His research combines single-neuron recording, computational modelling, and targeted neural stimulation to uncover the fundamental principles of neural reward systems that guide adaptive food choices and strategic social interactions. -
Claudia Kathe
Claudia Kathe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Fundamental Neuroscience at University of Lausanne, Switzerland. For her PhD, she worked with Lawrence Moon at King's College London, UK, and completed a postdoc with Grégoire Courtine at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Claudia's current work focuses on investigating the reorganization of neuronal networks in the spinal cord in neurological disorders and its impact on sensorimotor function. -
Christine Liu
Christine Liu is currently a postdoctoral scholar in Vikaas Sohal's lab at the University of California, San Francisco investigating neural circuits that mediate cognitive flexibility and the potential for psilocybin to rescue cognitive deficits in mouse models. Her PhD work in Stephan Lammel's lab revealed a circuit mechanism to explain the dose-dependent effects of nicotine on reward and aversion. Her research seeks to leverage the properties of psychoactive drugs to understand how neural circuits drive behavior. -
Chris Phillips
Chris Phillips is completing his PhD research in Catherine Thorn’s lab at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research currently focuses on understanding the contributions of striatal dopamine signaling to motor actions and reward signaling. His long-term goal is to continue researching the circuit level physiology of how the basal ganglia controls motor movements in healthy and diseased states. -
Simone Russo
Simone Russo earned his MD at University of Milan. Currently, he is finalizing his PhD from University of Milan (with Marcello Massimini) and in collaboration with the Allen Institute (with Christof Koch) while serving as a visiting scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology (with Garrett Stanley). His research is dedicated to unraveling causal interactions in the brain and how they are altered by pathological conditions. Specifically, he leverages invasive and noninvasive brain stimulation coupled with electrophysiological recordings to investigate causal interactions throughout the thalamocortical network and how they are disrupted by focal brain lesions and epilepsy. -
Giacomo Sitzia
Giacomo Sitzia is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Ole Kiehn’s laboratory at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focuses on understanding the functional connectome of brainstem circuits that control locomotion. During his PhD, done part in Sweden and part in the United States, he used mouse models to study the synaptic mechanisms underlying basal ganglia circuit dysfunctions in Parkinson’s disease and Alcohol Use Disorder. -
Sabina Srokova
Sabina Srokova is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at The University of Arizona, working with Arne Ekstrom and Carol Barnes. Her research examines the effects of healthy aging on episodic and spatial memory function through cognitive, MRI, eye-tracking, and virtual reality techniques. Primarily, her work examines age differences in the structure and function of the higher-level visual cortex. She completed her PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she studied the relationship between neural selectivity of the scene-selective network and episodic memory abilities in young and older populations. -
Andrew Westbrook
Andrew Westbrook is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research at Rutgers University. For his PhD, he worked with Todd Braver at Washington University in St. Louis and completed a dual postdoc with Roshan Cools at the Donders Institute and Michael Frank at Brown University. Andrew's work focuses on how cortical and subcortical neurotransmitters shape higher order cognition with a special focus on working memory, cognitive control, and decision-making. -
Samantha White
Samantha White completed PhD in American University in Washington, DC, studying the effects of learning on choice-related signaling in the rat medial frontal cortex. She is currently a postdoc fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health to study interactions between frontal cortex and striatum during learning and decision making. She is also a member of the OpenBehavior project which aims to increase accessibility of research tools for behavioral neuroscience. She is also active in community outreach, cofounding a neuroscience club for undergraduates at American, volunteering for the DC Regional Brain Bee, and organizing several Brain Awareness Week events in the DC area.