MeCo Lab Team
Sebnem Nur Tuncdemir, PhD
Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the UConn Health. Her research investigates how the neural circuits that encode specific features of contexts are organized in adults and to elucidate the developmental mechanisms underlying their formation. She is particularly interested in forming an integrated view of hippocampal circuit function from the activity of its component cell types at multiple time scales, and across the lifespan. This will provide new biomarkers for disorders characterized by impaired cognitive discrimination such as PTSD and depression.
Andres Daniel Grosmark, PhD
Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the UConn Health. Andres is a systems neuroscientist interested in understanding the circuit mechanisms which determines why some memories are kept for life-time while others are quickly forgotten. In particular, he is fascinated by the question of how diverse neural circuits and processes, including those occurring during distinct behavioral states, uniquely contribute to long-term memory formation. In turn, a better appreciation for this diversity in memory-forming mechanisms will provide unique insights that can be leveraged to understand and develop targeted treatments for neuropathologies which affect specific parts of the memory formation process, such as those seen in schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and age-related mild cognitive impairments.
Anvar Sariev, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow. Anvar completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Sebastien Royer at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. His long-term research goal is to understand how ideas emerge and evolve in the form of sequential patterned activity of complex neural networks.
Naveed Ghani, MSc
Research Assistant. Naveed holds a BA in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and a MSc in Medical Sciences from Boston University. Prior to joining MeCo Lab, he studied molecular substrates of drug addiction in the laboratories of Dr. Heng-ye Man and Dr. Kathleen Kantak. He is currently studying neurobiological mechanisms of long-term memory consolidation.
Brandon Haas
Research Assistant. Brandon holds a BA in Mathematics from Central Connecticut State University and an MS in Biostatistics from the University of Connecticut. He is currently assisting in mouse colony organization.
Quinn Fong
Undergraduate Assistant. Quinn is a senior at UConn, majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology. As a part of the Health Research Program, she is assisting in analyzing long-term spatial memory in mouse models in relation to Alzheimer’s Disease.
Anika Agrawal
Undergraduate Assistant. Anika is a junior at UConn, majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology, and part of UConn's Special Program in Medicine. As an IBACS grant recipient, she is assisting in examining how early-life seizures disrupt hippocampal circuits during critical periods of memory formation in mice.
Aditi Malpure
Undergraduate Assistant. Aditi is a sophomore at UConn, majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Psychology, and a part of UConn’s Special Program in Medicine. As STAMPS scholar, she is currently assisting in examining fear generalization to gain further insight into the mechanisms of PTSD in hippocampal and cortical regions.
Mannat Kadian
Undergraduate Assistant. Mannat is a sophomore at UConn, majoring in Molecular & Cellular Biology, and a part of UConn’s Special Program in Medicine. As a part of the Health Research Program, she is assisting in examining how early-life seizures disrupt hippocampal circuits during critical periods of memory formation in mice.
