UC Irvine CNLM Fellows
The CNLM Fellows represent one of the world’s top “think tanks” in neuroscience. With an average of $20 million each year in federal funding to support high impact research programs, as well as over 10,000 citations per Fellow, they are revolutionizing our understanding of the brain and its disorders, creating innovative neurotechnologies, and improving brain health on a global scale.
Amal Alachkar, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Teaching
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Neural correlates of mental states, mechanisms of psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar
disorder, depression), cilia and cognition
Javier Diaz Alonso, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Synapse organization, synaptic plasticity, molecular neuroscience, AMPA receptor, endocannabinoid system, epilepsy
Pierre Baldi, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
School of Information and Computer Sciences
Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Reinforcement Learning, and their Theoretical Foundations and Applications
Tallie Z. Baram M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Pediatrics
Stress-memory interactions, sex-differerces, early-life stress, brain circuit maturation, CRH, reward, anhedonia, PTSD
Lee Bardwell Ph.D.
Professor and Vice Chair
Developmental and Cell Biology
School of Biological Sciences
Kevin T. Beier, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Physiology & Biophysics
Neuroscience, Neural Circuits, Neural plasticity, Molecular Neuroscience, Behavior, Technique Development, Viral-genetic
Sven Bernecker, Ph.D.
Professor
Philosophy
Epistemology of memory, epistemic benefits of memory's imperfections, mnemonic confabulation
Mathew Blurton-Jones, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Stem cells, Parkinson disease, Alzheimer's disease, neurogenesis, neurodegeneration
Aaron Bornstein, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Cognitive Science
Computational cognitive neuroscience, episodic memory, decision-making, intertemporal choice, perceptual decisions, statistical inference, addiction, fMRI, EEG
Daniela Bota, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Neurology
School of Medicine
Glioblastoma, brain cancer, cancer stem cells, cancer therapeutics, chemotherapy-induced neurological impairment, neural stem cells
Gregory Brewer, Ph.D.
Professor
Biomedical Engineering
Memory, Alzheimer's disease, neuronal networks, neuron cell culture, in vitro physiology
Jorge Busciglio, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Alzheimer's disease, Down's syndrome, neurodegeneration, axonal transport, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction
Susan Charles, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychological Science
Emotional processes across the adult life span, subjective experience and cognitive processes, health and emotion
Chuansheng Chen, Ph.D.
Chancellor's Professor
Psychological Science and Education
Cross-cultural psychology, adolescent development, cognitive neuroscience, behavior genetics
Liz Chrastil, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Navigation, spatial memory, episodic memory, individual differences, fMRI, virtual reality
Lulu Chen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Neurodevelopment, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Schizophrenia, Learning and Memory, Synapse formation
Susana Cohen-Cory, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Synapse formation in the developing nervous system; in vivo imaging studies
Karina Cramer, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Neural development, plasticity, synaptogenesis, glia, pruning, auditory brainstem
Barbara Dosher, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Cognitive Science
Attention, perceptual learning, human information processing, visual perception, memory retrieval
Laura Ewell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
network mechanisms, single unit recording, oscillations, memory, pattern separation, epilepsy
Lisa Flanagan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurology
Neural stem cell differentiation, development, stem cell transplantation, extracellular matrix
Norbert Fortin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, electrophysiology, behavioral neuroscience, sequence memory
Christie Fowler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Drug addiction, nicotine, aversion, genetics, learning, dopamine, motivated behaviors
Ron Frostig, Ph.D.
Professor Neurobiology and Behavior
Sensory neocortex, cortical plasticity, structural-function relationships, optical imaging
Christine Gall, Ph.D.
Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Adult synaptic plasticity, memory encoding, synaptic modulators, intellectual disability, autism, adhesion proteins, neurotrophic factors
Sunil Gandhi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Critical period plasticity, interneurons, visual system, neuronal transplantation, connectomics, brain clearing
Charles Glabe, Ph.D.
Professor
Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Amyloid, pathogenesis, neurodegenerative disease, neuroinflammation, immunotherapy
Kim Green, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Alzheimer’s disease, microglia, inflammation, aging, therapeutics
John Guzowski, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Learning, memory, synaptic plasticity, hippocampus, gene expression, immediate early gene imaging
Elizabeth Head, Ph.D.
Professor
Pathology
Clinical and neuropathological study of aging and Alzheimer disease in Down syndrome, preclinical studies in an animal model of Alzheimer disease, cerebrovascular dysfunction and neuroinflammation
Gregory Hickok, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Sciences
Neuroanatomy of language, neural plasticity, neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience
Robert Hunt, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Neural circuits, synapses, stem cells, epilepsy, autism, hippocampal plasticity, electrophysiology
Kei Igarashi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Memory, olfaction, Alzheimer's disease, hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, electrophysiology
Autumn Ivy, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Pediatrics
Early-life experience, epigenetics, neurology, learning and memory, developmental disorders, exercise
Susanne Jaeggi, Ph.D.
Professor
Education
Working memory, executive control, plasticity, cognitive training, transfer, neural stimulation
Claudia Kawas, M.D.
Professor
Neurology
Aging, dementia, longevity, oldest old, epidemiology, Alzheimer’s, neuropathology, geriatrics
J. Zoe Klemfuss, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychological Science
Narrative development, Children’s autobiographical memory, Sociocontextual influences on children’s narrative, memory, and well-being, Children’s eyewitness abilities
Jeffrey Krichmar, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Neurosciences
Computational neuroscience, decision making, evolutionary computation, robotics, spatial navigation
Frank LaFerla, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Molecular biology, Alzheimer's disease, learning and memory, transgenic mouse models
Albert R. La Spada, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Pathology & Neurology
Neurodegeneration, neurotherapeutics, neurogenetics, translational neuroscience
Julie Lauterborn, Ph.D.
Full Researcher
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Intellectual disability, Fragile X, Down syndrome, Autism, stress, learning and memory, plasticity
Michael Lee, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Sciences
Cognitive modeling, memory models, decision making, Bayesian statistics, individual differences
Michael Leon, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Olfactory processing, sensory enrichment, autism, aging, Alzheimer’s disease
Frances Leslie, Ph.D.
Professor
Pharmacology
Neuropharmacology, addiction, drugs of abuse, brain development, adolescence, prenatal period
Linda Levine, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychological Science
Relations between cognitive and emotional development, how emotions influence attention and memory
Mimi Liljeholm, Ph.D.
Cognitive Sciences
Charles Limoli, Ph.D.
Professor
Radiation Oncology
Oxidative stress, hippocampal neurogenesis, stem cells, transplantation, chemo-brain, memory
Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Psychological Science
Human memory, false memories, eyewitness testimony, psychology and law, criminology
Shahrdad Lotfipour, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Emergency Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Learning and Memory, Limbic Brain, Drug Seeking, Gut-Brain Axis, Development, Maternal Drug Exposure, Brain Imaging, Reward
Angela Lukowski, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychological Science
Memory development in infancy and early childhood; individual differences in long-term memory in infancy; the impact of early nutrition on development
Gyorgy Lur, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Neuronal signal integration, chronic and acute stress, cognitive behavior, optical techniques
Gary Lynch, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Synaptic plasticity, LTP, glutamate receptors, cognitive disorders, computational models
Stephen Mahler, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Addiction, reward circuits, cannabinoids, Pavlovian conditioning, motivation, executive function
Bryce Mander, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Sleep disorders, cognitive aging, Alzheimer's disease, memory, neurodegeneration
Mark Mapstone, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurology
Cognitive aging, neuropsychology, amnesia, metabolomics, biomarkers, cognitive phenotyping
Elizabeth Martin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychological Science
Transdiagnostic emotional and social functioning, affective control and regulation, affect and memory
James McGaugh, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Emotional modulation of memory, arousal, memory consolidation, superior autobiographical memory
Bruce McNaughton, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Computational models, hippocampus, learning and memory, plasticity, spatial memory, neurophysiology
Sara Mednick, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Sciences
Sleep, EEG, pharmacology, memory consolidation, psychophysics, fMRI, aging and disease
Raju Metherate, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Neurophysiology, synaptic physiology of auditory cortex, sensory plasticity, nicotine
Bin Nan, Ph.D.
Professor
Statistics
High-dimensional statistics, imaging analysis, longitudinal analysis, statistical learning
Andrea Nicholas, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Neurobiology and Behavior
Learning and memory in the classroom, educational methods, tools and software for active learning
Diane O'Dowd, Ph.D.
Professor
Developmental and Cell Biology
Molecular genetics, drugs, induced pluripotent stem cells, flies, functional plasticity, neuronal maturation
Andre Obenaus, Ph.D.
Professor
Pediatrics
MRI, traumatic brain injury, stroke, aging, circuits, brain vasculature, early life stress, animal imaging
Sean Ostlund, Ph.D.
Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care
Megan Peters, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cognitive Science
Perception, metacognition, consciousness, computational modeling, fMRI
Uma Rao, M.D.
Professor
Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Adolescence, depression, substance abuse, neurobiology, risk/resilience
David Reinkensmeyer, Ph.D.
Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Neuromuscular control, motor learning, robotics, stroke rehabilitation, computational models
Jenna L Riis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychological Science
School of Social Ecology
Child development, early life adversity, stress, salivary bioscience, public health, program implementation and evaluation.
Eitan Schechtman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
School of Biological Sciences
Sleep, memory, cognitive neuroscience, EEG
Robert Spitale, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Neurochemistry, chemical biology, RNA biology, RNA therapeutics for memory and learning disorders
Craig Stark, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Memory, hippocampus, neuroimaging, amnesia, fMRI, video games, aging
Oswald Steward, Ph.D.
Professor
Anatomy & Neurobiology
Spinal cord injury, regeneration, sprouting, epilepsy, excitotoxicity, cellular mechanisms of plasticity
Mark Steyvers Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Sciences
Wisdom of crowds, aggregating human judgments, computational models of the mind, machine learning and statistics
Georg Striedter, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Evolutionary neurobiology and animal behavior
Andrea Tenner, Ph.D.
Professor
Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Innate immunity, inflammation, complement, Alzheimer's disease, cell surface receptors
Leslie Thompson, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychiatry and Human Behavior
Human genetic disorders, precision medicine, Huntington’s disease, genomics, therapeutics
Katherine Thompson-Peer, Ph.D.
Developmental & Cell Biology
Kristina A. Uban, Ph.D.
Public Health
Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research (IISBR)
Theo G.M. van Erp, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Psychiatry & Human Behavior
School of Medicine
Psychiatry, brain data analysis, schizophrenia
Craig Walsh, Ph.D.
Professor
Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Immunology, apoptosis, signal transduction, T cells, autoimmunity, memory deficits
Momoko Watanabe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Neurodevelopment, stem cells, brain organoids, tissue engineering, autism spectrum disorders, neurological disorders
DeWayne P. Williams, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychological Science
Social health psychology, health disparities, psychophysiology, discrimination, stigma, prejudice, stereotyping, stress and health, self-regulation
Marcelo Wood, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Epigenetics, memory, drug addiction, synaptic plasticity, aging, mouse models, physiology
Xiangmin Xu, Ph.D.
Professor
Anatomy and Neurobiology
Neural circuits, cell-type specific, electrophysiology, imaging, optical stimulation
Michael Yassa, Ph.D.
Professor
Neurobiology and Behavior
Learning, memory, aging, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, cross-species neuroimaging, clinical trials
Alyson K. Zalta, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychological Science
School of Social Ecology
Trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, transdiagnostic, resilience, prevention & treatment
External Fellows
Ted Abel, Ph.D.
Professor
Molecular Physiology
University of Iowa
Mammalian hippocampus, long-term memory storage, psychiatric disorders, neurodevelopment disorders, neuronal circuits, behavioral epigenomics, sleep, memory
Timothy Allen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychology
Florida International University
Learning & memory, episodic memory, behavioral neuroscience, comparative neuroscience, in vivo electrophysiology, network oscillations, circuit analysis, anatomical tracing, hippocampus, nucleus reuniens, thalamus, medial prefrontal cortex
Michel Baudry, Ph.D.
Professor
Biomedical Sciences
Western University
Synaptic plasticity, learning and memory, calpain, neurodegeneration, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, Angelman Syndrome
Francesco Battaglia, Ph.D.
Professor
Donders Institute for Brain
Cognition and Behaviour
Radboud University Nijmegen
Neural dynamics, sleep, criticality, analysis of neural data, memory, learning
Federico Bermudez-Rattoni, Ph.D.
Professor
Cognitive Neurosciences
National Autonomous University of Mexico
Memory, Alzheimer's disease, neuronal networks, cognitive neuroscience, dopaminergic circuits, catecholaminergic activity.
Kasia Bieszczad, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychology
Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Auditory cortex, tonotopic map, sensory physiology, behavioral psychology, epigenetics, histone acetylation, representational plasticity
Jennifer Bizon, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair,
Co-Director
Cognitive Aging and Memory Center
University of Florida
Cognition, memory, decision making, brain aging, Alzheimer's disease
Timothy Bredy, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Queensland Brain Institute
University of Queensland, Australia
Memory, fear, extinction, PTSD, phobia, epigenetics, non-coding RNA, RNA modification, epitranscriptomics, DNA structure, activity-dependent gene expression
Sara Burke, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neuroscience
University of Florida
Aging, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, memory, neurophysiology, perirhinal cortex
Robert Clark, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychiatry
University of California, San Diego
Hippocampus and memory, recognition memory, classical conditioning, science history, spatial memory
Laura Colgin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Neuroscience
University of Texas, Austin
Learning, brain rhythms, memory, hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer's disease
Laura DeNardo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Physiology
UCLA
Neurodevelopment, Learning and Memory, Neural Circuits, Neural plasticity, Anxiety Disorders, Early Life Stress
Michael Fanselow, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
Fear, learning, PTSD, stress, anxiety
Joaquin Fuster, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
Brain stroke, brain trauma, Alzheimer's dementia, and schizophrenia
Paul Gold, Ph.D.
Professor
Biology
Syracuse University
Aging; cell signaling and communication; learning, memory, and plasticity; neurological and psychiatric conditions
Michael Hasselmo, Ph.D.
Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences
Director, Center for Systems Neuroscience
Boston University
Acetylcholine, episodic memory, theta rhythm, entorhinal cortex, medial septum, hippocampus, retrosplenial cortex, presynaptic inhibition, spike frequency accommodation, persistent spiking
Alicia Izquierdo, Ph.D.
Professor
Behavioral Neuroscience
University of California, Los Angeles
Reward learning, flexible learning, value-based decision making, learning under uncertainty, chemogenetics, in vivo recording and imaging
Ivan Izquierdo, Ph.D.
Professor
Neuroscience
Pontífica Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Barbara Knowlton, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
Implicit learning, skill learning, episodic memory, cognitive neuroscience, aging, habit learning, reward
Jack Lin, M.D.
Professor
Neurology
University of California, Davis
Emotional processing, learning and memory, epilepsy, clinical neurophysiology, electrocorticography
Stephen Maren, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor and Charles H. Gregory Chair of Liberal Arts
Texas A&M University
Emotional learning and memory, hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, fear conditioning, extinction, context-specific behavior
Kelsey Martin, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Biological Chemistry
University of California, Los Angeles
Synaptic plasticity, gene expression, local translation, synapse formation, transcription, cell signaling, autism, neuronal cell biology, intracellular trafficking.
Aaron Mattfeld, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychology
Florida International University
Learning and memory, development, neurodevelopment disorders, ADHD, teaching practices, diagnosis and treatment of developmental disorders
Andrew Maurer, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Neuroscience
University of Florida
Aging, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, memory, neurophysiology, perirhinal cortex
Richard Morris, Ph.D.
Professor
Neuroscience
University of Edinburgh
Synapses, Circuits and Behaviour
Lara Rangel, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cognitive Science
UC San Diego
Rhythmic coordination of brain activity, information processing in neural networks, dynamic interactions between neurons, learning, memory, neuromodulation.
Charan Ranganath, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychology
University of California, Davis
EEG, fMRI, eye-tracking, patient research, intracranial recording, tDCS, salivating dogs
Benno Roozendaal, Ph.D.
Professor
Donders Institute for Brain
Cognition and Behaviour
Radboud University Medical Center
Stress, emotional arousal, learning and memory, amygdala, hippocampus, post-traumatic stress disorder
Barry Setlow, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychiatry
University of Florida
Addiction, diazepam, neurobiology, neuroscience, nicotine
Melissa Sharpe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
Dopamine, Lateral Hypothalamus, Reinforcement Learning, Behavioral Neuroscience, Optogenetics
Alcino Silva, Ph.D.
Professor
Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
Memory, aging, Neurofibromatosis type I, Noonan syndrome, Recovery, memory linking, memory allocation, hippocampus, amygdala, researchmaps, Tuberous Sclerosis, memory structures
Christine N. Smith, Ph.D.
Ivan Soltesz, Ph.D.
Professor
Neuroscience
Stanford University
Inhibition, synaptic plasticity, cannabinoids, neuronal microcircuits, in vivo imaging, electrophysiology, computational modeling
Robert James Sutherland, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair in the Department of Neuroscience
Board of Governors Research Chair in Neuroscience
Director, Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience
University of Lethbridge
Wendy Suzuki, Ph.D.
Professor
Neural Science
New York University
Memory, hippocampus physical activity, brain plasticity, anxiety, Alzheimer's disease
