Course Faculty and Lecturers
Course Directors

Alberto E. Pereda
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Alberto Pereda is a Professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His laboratory is interested in the properties and dynamics of gap junction-mediated electrical transmission in the vertebrate brain. The approach involves investigating electrical transmission at identifiable auditory mixed (electrical and chemical) synapses on the fish Mauthner cells, as well mammalian brain structures. While the study of plasticity of chemical synapses has long been an area of primary interest to neuroscientists, less is known about the modifiability of electrical synapses. Alberto’s laboratory investigates mechanisms underlying changes in synaptic strength at electrical synapses, which ultimately requires determining their full molecular and structural complexity. Alberto has served as faculty in the Neurobiology course from 1996-2000 and 2004-2007, and directed the Grass Laboratory in 2012-2014. He began co-directing NS&B in 2020.

Stephanie White
UCLA
Stephanie White is Professor of Integrative Biology & Physiology at UCLA where she also chairs the Undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program. Her lab studies the neural basis of socially-learned vocal communication using songbirds. She conducted her doctoral training with Russ Fernald at Stanford University, investigating the social regulation of reproduction in cichlid fish. She was a postdoc at Duke with Rich Mooney, studying the neural basis of birdsong. Steph has previously been a student in NS&B and co-directed the Grass Labs in 2009-11. She began co-directing NS&B in 2019.
Course Faculty
Alberto Pereda, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Stephanie White, UCLA
Felix Schweizer, UCLA
Michael Wright, California State University Sacramento
Krista Todd, Westminster University
Antonia Murin-Burgin, Instituto de Investigacion en Biomedicina de Buenos Aires
Serapio Baca, University of Virginia
David Weisblat, UC Berkeley
Simon Hess, University of Cologne
Lydia Szczupak, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Eric Fortune, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Jan Grewe, University of Tubingen
Laura Quintana, Clemente Estable Biological Research Institute
Vicky Salazar, Cape Breton University
Ulises Ricoy, University of Arizona, Tucson
Dawn Blitz, University of Miami
Mark Beenhakker, University of Virginia
John Huguenard, Stanford University
Gaby Maimon, Rockefeller University
Gwyneth Card, Columbia University
John Tuthill, University of Washington
Marie Suver, Vanderbilt University
Michael Dickinson, Caltech
Matt Van der Meer, Dartmouth University
Jess Cardin, Yale University
Nic Tritsch, New York University
Stephen Cowan, University of Arizona, Tucson
Micahael Brecht, Humboldt University
Ann Clemens, University of Edinburgh
Mimi Kao, Tufts University
Nancy Day, Whitman College
Mark Alkema, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Vivek Venkatachalam, Northeastern University
Meg Younger, Boston University
Shelley Adamo, Dalhousie University
Gina Poe, University of California Los Angeles
Harold Zakon, University of Texas, Austin
Joe Fetcho, Cornell University
Shigeki Watanabe, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Bianca Marlin-Jones, Columbia University
Cindy Moss, Johns Hopkins University
Ashlee Van't Veer, National Institute of Mental Health
Course Staff
Course Assistants
- Mackenzie Macomber, Colby College
- Kylee Meece, Western Kentucky University
Teaching Assistants
Cycle I - Leech
- Christopher Winchell, UC Berkeley
Cycle II - Electric Fish
- Katie Gallman, New Jersey Institute of Technology
- Andrea Roeser, New Jersey Institute of Technology
- Stomato-thalamo-gastric ganglion
- Anna Schneider, New Jersey Institute of Technology
- Scott Kilianski, University of Virginia
- Savanna-Rae Fahoum, Miami University
- Sonal Kedia, Brandeis University
- Daniel Powell, Bowdoin College
Teaching Assistants
Cycle III - Fly
- Sam Whitehead, Cal Tech
- Jazz Weissman, Rockefeller University
- Ellen Lesser, University of Washington
- Sam Asinof, Janelia Farms
- Mouse
- Clayton Barnes, Yale University
- Quentin Perrenoud, Yale University
- Manish Mohapatra, Dartmouth
- Ricardo Melani, New York University
- Abhilasha Vishwanath, University of Arizona
Cycle IV - Birdsong
- Nicole Tai, Tufts University
- Hamish Mehaffey, UCSF
- Worm
- Mahdi Torkashvand, Northeastern University
- Maedeh Seyedolmohadesin, Northeastern University
- Gabriella Blanco, U Mass Medical School
- Shankar Ramachandran, U Mass Medical School