Princeton Neuroscience Institute

On June 4th the Neuroscience Institute celebrated the accomplishments of the graduating seniors in the Neuroscience Certificate Program.  This year we had 34 students from various majors receive the certificate.

Scarlett  Barker(PSY), Daniel Barson(MOL), Brandon Chan(PSY), Diya Das(MOL), Ceymi Doenyas(PSY), Rogelio Esparza(MOL), Estefania Fiallos(MOL), Carlo Frem(PSY), Ellen Gettings(PSY), Alison Goldblatt(PSY), Grace Haaland(PSY), Kaitlin Henderson(MOL), Brian Hsueh(CHM), Jason Kaplan(PHI), Gregory Kirschen(PSY), Sachidevi Lake(MOL), Julie Leary(PSY), Grace Marrinan(PSY), John Melson(MOL), Stephanie Noble(CHM), Adlai Pappy(MOL), Matthew Prast(COS), Nicole Rafidi(ELE), Jiyeon Son(ANT), Sarah Stroud(EEB), Shivani Sud(MOL), Rebecca Tran(PSY), Aaron Trippe(COS), Ajay Tungare(EEB), Emma Vartanian(PSY), Gary Wang(PSY), Harold Wang(MAT), Jennifer Wu(PSY), Guanya Yang(CHM)  

Cristina Domnisoru, a third year graduate student in the Neuroscience Institute, received the 2012 Neuroscience Graduate teaching prize for her remarkable ability to connect with the students and convey her commitment to help them succeed.   Cristina added a new component to the NEU 101 and her suggestions changed the face of the course.

Diya Das received the 2012 John Brinster, Class of 1943, Neuroscience senior thesis Prize for her thesis entitled “A Quantitative Analysis of Temperament and Connections to Neuroanatomy in the Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris)”.   Diya, a Molecular Biology major, did her senior thesis work in the lab of Professor Sam Wang’s lab.   Diya will be pursuing her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rebecca Tran received the 2012 John Brinster, Class of 1943, Neuroscience senior thesis Prize for her thesis entitled “Brains, BOLD Signals, and the Beatles: How Musicians and Nonmusicians Listen to Music”. Rebecca, A Psychology major, did her senior thesis work in Professor Uri Hasson’s lab.   Rebecca will be attending the University of Colorado to study medicine.

Ceymi Doenyas, a Psychology major, received the prize for highest GPA award in the Princeton Neuroscience certificate graduating class.   Ceymi received an outreach fellowship and will be doing a community service project in her home town of Istanbul working with children with Autism.

Six Neuroscience certificate students were chosen as recipients of undergraduate research awards. These awards will help support the students in their senior Neuroscience independent work.

Yuan Chang Leong is a recipient of the Nancy J. Newman, MD ’78 & Valerie Biousse, MD Senior Thesis Research Fund for Neuroscience research award. Yuan Chang will investigate the interaction between attention and learning during decision-making processes in the lab of Professor Yael Niv of the Psychology Department.

Javier Masis is a recipient of the Nancy J. Newman, MD ’78 & Valerie Biousse, MD Senior Thesis Research Fund for Neuroscience research award.   Javier will be working on visual processing in the retina, which means I will be trying to discover whether certain behaviorally relevant visual stimuli elicit special retinal circuit signals, and then trying to decode and model these signals in the lab of Professor Michael Berry of the Molecular Biology Department.

Abigail Greene is a recipient of the James M. Shapiro ’80 Fund for Undergraduate Research in Neuroscience research award.   Abigail is exploring the viability of a whole-brain, correlation-based functional alignment technique to facilitate the comparison of neural imaging data across subjects in the lab of Professor Jonathan Cohen of the Psychology Department.

Stanley Yuan is a recipient of the James M. Shapiro ’80 Fund for Undergraduate Research in Neuroscience research award.   Stanley is researching the differences of gene expression between different populations of motor neurons in ALS in the la of Elizabeth Gould of the Psychology Department.

Alyssa Mancini is a recipient of the Sanda & Jeremiah Lambert ’55 Fund for Undergraduate Neuroscience, in Honor of Clare Lambert ’08 and Hilary Lambert ‘10 research award.   Alyssa will study the effects of peripheral innervation on pattern formation during lung development in the lab of Professor Celeste Nelson in the Chemical & Biological Engineering Department.

Daniel Toker is a recipient of the Sanda & Jeremiah Lambert ’55 Fund for Undergraduate Neuroscience, in Honor of Clare Lambert ’08 and Hilary Lambert ‘10 research award.   Daniel will be using fMRI to study the relationship between people's sense of elapsed time and the degree of neural drift in brain regions that encode general context, in the lab of Professor Ken Norman of the Psychology Department.