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

Course Staff