We are pleased to announce that Jayeeta Basu has been selected as the recipient of this year's Anuradha Rao Memorial SFN Travel Award. Jayeeta is currently a postdoc at Columbia University in the Siegelbaum lab, where she studies how excitatory and inhibitory circuits interact to shape plasticity in the hippocampus. Congratulations to Jayeeta and special thanks to all of the applicants this year.
2011
This year’s recipient is Dr. Maria “Loly” Rubio. Loly is a Doctor of Medicine from Argentina who was drawn to research for developing our understanding of the mechanisms behind mental illness. She is currently a post doctoral fellow in Dr. Meador-Woodruff’s laboratory in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alabama, where she is investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms pathways that may contribute to schizophrenia.
2010
Dr. Greg Gage, a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Michigan. Greg’s work is on the interneurons in the striatum and he kindly explained to us, in layman’s terms, that he studies the neural mechanisms behind decision making. In addition to his basic research impacting the understanding of a variety of disorders like addiction and Tourette’s syndrome, we were intrigued to see how Greg has applied himself to developing low cost tools for neuroscience education for the masses (www. BackyardBrains.com). Kits like the Spikerbox will hopefully enable more children across the globe to experience the joy of science and understand the brain. Anuradha was very interested in making science understandable and accessible to all. He is currently a Post Doc at the University of Michigan.
2009
Yao Chen, Harvard University. Development of neural maps in the brain to understand how neural circuits function to produce both normal and pathological behavior. She is currently a Post Doc at Harvard University.
2008
Lakshmi Subramanian - a Research Scholar at the Department of Biological Sciences in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. Lakshmi’s thesis work was focused on patterning and cell fate specification in the rodent brain, and her research goals include studying the mechanism by which cell fate determination occurs in the progenitor cells of the developing brain . She is interested in outreach and neuroscience education at the undergraduate level, and represents the promise of young neuroscientists in India, where neuroscience is still a new field. She is currently a Post-Doc at UCSF.
And
Aaron Blankenship, UC Berkeley.
2007
Abigail Person, a post-doctoral researcher from Dr. Luo's lab in Beijing, China, for her work on bird song.
2006
Bing Ye is from China, and did his doctoral work with Rick Huganir (a Neuron editorial board member) at Johns Hopkins on a topic closely related to Anu's interests. His post doctoral research was at UCSF. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan.
2005
The first recipient of this award was Vardhan Dani, a doctoral student at Brandeis College . He was selected because hew is working in an area that Anuradha would find interesting--the link between synaptic circuitry and transcriptional regulation. As a graduate student at Brandeis he looked at the cortical circuitry of a mouse model for Rett's syndrome, which is an autism-like disorder that affects young girls. He is from India and his Masters research was performed at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Vardhan is currently a Post Doc at Stanford University.
