Garret Stuber
Ph.D., Professor
Garret received his B.S. degree from University of Washington in 2000 and his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from UNC Chapel Hill in 2005 where he worked with Regina Carelli and Mark Wightman. He completed his postdoctoral work with Antonello Bonci at UCSF where he learned slice electrophysiology and established optogenetic approaches to study neural circuit function.
Garret started the lab in 2010 in the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Center at UNC. In 2018 the Stuber Lab moved to the University of Washington to join the newly formed center for the Neurobiology of Addiction, Pain, and Emotion and the Departments of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine and Pharmacology. He has co-authored over 75 papers on the neurocircuitry underlying motivated behavior. While not in the lab Garret spends time with his family and enjoys cycling and traveling.
Postdoctoral Fellows & Research Residents
Adam gordon-fennell
Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Adam earned his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in Micky Marinelli’s lab where he studied the role of the lateral preoptic area in reinforcement and affective valence using behavioral optogenetics, anesthetized in-vivo electrophysiology, and fiber photometry. His studies revealed that the lateral preoptic area, and its projection to the ventral tegmental area, drives reinforcement despite also producing negative affective valence. During his post-doctoral work in Garret Stuber’s lab, he has designed an open-source head-fixed behavioral system for modeling consummatory and operant behaviors. He is now studying the signaling dynamics and causal role of subpopulations of lateral hypothalamus neurons during operant and consummatory behaviors using two-photon imaging, fiber photometry, and optogenetics. Through his work, he aims to understand of the relationship between neural dynamics in the reward system and the behaviors these systems underly with the ultimate goal of improving treatments for motivational disorders such as drug addiction and overeating.
BRANDY BRIONES
Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Brandy received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience & Psychology from Princeton University, where she conducted research on neuronal and non-neuronal plasticity in mouse models of Autism Spectrum Disorder under the supervision of Elizabeth Gould. Her current research interests lie in the cellular and hormonal mechanisms that contribute to social behavior bias. In her free time, Brandy enjoys playing sports, exploring the Pacific Northwest, taking her cat Thorndike for walks, and drinking lots & lots of coffee.
kentaro ishii
Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
Kentaro is interested in how the brain is modulated by hormones. He got his Ph.D. at Tokyo University, under the supervision of Kazushige Touhara. He used pharmacology and optogenetics to dissect the neural circuitry that conveys the sensory information of sex pheromones in female mice. During his postdoctoral training at the Stuber lab, he will study the paraventricular hypothalamus to understand how circulating hormones modulate feeding behavior in mice.
david Ottenheimer
Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow
David is interested in how the brain processes the value of highly palatable food rewards. During his Ph.D. in Patricia Janak's lab at Johns Hopkins, he used a combination of in vivo electrophysiology and optogenetics to investigate the role of the ventral pallidum in preference-guided reward-seeking behaviors. For his postdoctoral training, David is studying widespread coding of cue value using acute Neuropixels recordings and longitudinal two-photon calcium imaging. He is also studying the transcriptional impact of high fat diet using RNA-sequencing.
Hanan baker
M.D., Ph.D., Research Resident
Hanan was born and raised in Fresno, California. She went to UC Merced for her first two years of undergraduate and then transferred to UCLA where she got a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in biochemistry. There she studied the neurobiology of Parkinson’s disease. She did her MD-PhD training at the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program in New York City. She got her PhD in Physiology, Biophysics, and Systems biology from Weill Cornell Medicine studying membrane biophysics in Olaf Andersen’s lab and nanotechnology in Daniel Heller’s lab. Then she matched as a research resident into the Bonica Scholar’s Anesthesiology residency program at UW. She is interested in understanding the neurobiological basis of consciousness by using pharmacologic perturbations of the mind. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding, surfing, writing, and playing videogames.
Graduate Students
madelyn Hjort
Ph.D. Student, Neuroscience
Madelyn received B.S. degrees in Neuroscience and Genetics at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. While there, she worked in Timothy Ebner MD/PhD’s lab using two-photon calcium imaging to study changes in motor cortex during a motor attack in the tottering mouse, a model of Episodic Ataxia Type II. She also used DeepLabCut to track movement kinematics and correlate them with neural activity, and assisted in the development of a See-Shells transparent polymer skull variant for the tottering mice. For her graduate studies, Madelyn is interested in using two-photon calcium imaging to probe how behavioral decisions and the rewards they involve are represented in genetically and projection-defined circuits within cortical areas relevant to motivated behavior. Outside the lab, Madelyn spends time walking with her dog and cooking with her husband.
Cassidy burke
MD/Ph.D. Graduate Student, Neuroscience
Cassidy graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Neuroscience and English. There she worked in the Perez-Reyes lab on gene therapy development for temporal lobe epilepsy. After two years as an NIH IRTA studying mechanisms of neuroinflammation in mitochondrial disease, she entered the UW MSTP program. Cassidy is interested in neural circuits involved in the encoding of rewarding and aversive stimuli, and how these circuits may become dysregulated in psychiatric disease states.
Abi Elerding
Ph.D Student, Pharmacology
Abi graduated from the University of Washington with a B.S. in Biology. During that time, she worked in Dr. Michael Bruchas’ lab studying amygdala-striatal circuits for appetitive and aversive action. After graduating, she remained at UW and entered the Pharmacology graduate program. Abi will collaborate with the Zweifel lab for her graduate training to study neural circuits regulating reward learning with two-photon calcium imaging. Outside the lab, she enjoys climbing, snowboarding, biking, and reading.
Technicians, Management, Staff and Undergraduates
charles zhou
Ph.D., Research Staff Scientist
Charles earned his B.S. degree in Psychology and Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. His Ph.D. thesis project with Dr. Flavio Frohlich focused on visual oddball processing in the ferret parietal cortex using 2-photon calcium imaging. At UW, Charles develops analysis programs for calcium imaging data and manages the NAPE (Neurobiology Addiction, Pain, and Emotion) center's 2-photon microscope space.
Hannah Stevenson
Research Technician
Hannah graduated from Western Washington University with her B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience in 2021 under the mentorship of Dr. Kaplan where she studied the role of CBD in anxiety and learning behaviors in adolescent mice. After graduation, she joined the Stuber lab at UW to learn about lab management and behavioral techniques. In her free time, Hannah enjoys exercising, reading, and exploring new restaurants.
Barbara benowitz
Research Technician
Barbara earned her B.A. degree in Psychology at Gettysburg College in 2020. During that time, she spent 2 years as an NIH IRTA examining the central amygdala–zona incerta pathway specifically and its involvement in chronic pain modulation. She is currently in the Stuber Lab working with Dr. Adam Gordon-Fennell studying the neurocircuitry associated with reward behaviors, motivation, and drug addiction. In her free-time, Barbara enjoys hiking, fostering pets, playing the flute, and eating at new restaurants.
Zoe garrett
Research Coordinator
Zoe received her B.A. in Psychology with a Neuroscience concentration from St. Olaf College. She is currently a SOAR fellow learning about two-photon calcium imaging and other techniques. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, getting outside with friends, and working out.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Pranav Senthilkumar
Isabella Montequin
Prabhat Aluri
Anthony Campuzano
Olivia Tucker
Nico Masputra
Dechen Sakya
Lab Alumni
Mark Rossi, PhD., Assistant Professor at Rutgers University
Ivan Trujillo-Pisanty, PhD., Teaching Faculty at Langara University
Randall Ung, PhD., Medical Resident at Pennsylvania State University
Taylor Hobbs, PhD student at University of Pittsburgh
Jill Liu, PhD student at Scripps Institute
Vijay Namboodiri, PhD., Assistant Professor at University of California, San Francisco
Marcus Basiri, PhD., currently a M.D. student at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Jose Rodríguez-Romanguera, Postdoctoral Fellow, currently an Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Jim Otis, Postdoctoral Fellow, currently an Assistant Professor at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC)
Jenna McHenry, Postdoctoral Fellow, currently an Assistant Professor at Duke University
Heather Decot, Ph.D., currently a Research Specialist at the Center for Animal MRI (CAMRI) at UNC Chapel Hill
Hanna van den Munkhof, Visiting Graduate Student, currently a Ph.D. student at the Korotkova Lab, Max Planck Institute in Köln
Louisa Eckman, Research Technician, currently a M.D. student at Virginia Tech
Kay van Heeswijk, Visiting Graduate Student
Shanna Resendez, Postdoctoral Fellow, currently a Regional Field Scientific Consultant Manager at Inscopix
Elisa Voets, Visiting Graduate Student, currently a Market Researcher at Rijnstate
Hiroshi Nomura, Postdoctoral Fellow, currently an Assistant Professor at Hokkaido University
Ruud van Zessen, Visiting Graduate Student, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lüscher Lab, University of Geneva
Alice Stamatakis, Ph.D., currently Lead Scientist at Inscopix
James Soetedjo, currently a MD/PhD student at University of Michigan
Josh Jennings, Ph.D., currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Deisseroth Lab, Stanford University
Dennis Sparta, Postdoctoral Fellow, currently an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland School of Medicine
Koichi Hashikawa, Senior Scientist, Computational Biologist at The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson
Yoshiko Hashikawa, Senior Scientist at Abbvie
Jason Renaldi Siputro, Undergraduate Researcher
Ned Kan, Undergraduate Researcher
Gabrielle Cooper, Undergraduate Researcher
Tom Wu, Undergraduate Researcher
Lauren Ran, Undergraduate Researcher
Monica Tschang, Rotation Student, University of Washington
Joumana Barbakh, Undergraduate Researcher
Rhiana Simon, Ph.D., currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harwell Lab, UCSF
Shreya Singh, Undergraduate Researcher
Alondra Torres, Undergraduate Researcher
Roger Chang, MD, PhD Adult Epilepsy Fellow, Stanford