MCDB - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Boris Shraiman and Ken Kosik Lab
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- Academic Coordinator for Intro Bio
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- Graduate Student / Ronald Keiflin Lab
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- Undergraduate Academic Advisor
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- Graduate Student / Morrissey Lab
I am using optogenetics to study how macrophages remember and integrate phagocytic signals.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Meghan Morrissey Lab
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- Graduate Student / Sung Soo Kim Lab
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- Graduate Student / Boris Shraiman and Ken Kosik Lab
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- Assistant Professor
- Graduate Student / Brooke Gardner Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Simpson Lab
Dr. Vandenberg received her B.A. degree in Biology and Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Ph.D. in Neurosciences from the University of California, San Diego. Her doctoral dissertation examined the biochemistry of visual transduction. As an NIH postdoctoral fellow and a Muscular Dystrophy Association postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, she studied sodium and potassium channels in nerve and muscle cells. Her research at UCSB uses molecular, cell biological and biophysical approaches to elucidate the mechanisms of ion channel function, protein trafficking and neuronal polarity.
Cell biology of the nervous system and muscle; mechanisms of ion channel trafficking; function and regulation of potassium channels; neuronal cell polarity.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Arias Lab
- Graduate Student / Carolina Arias Lab
Job Titles:
- Research Professor
- Storke II Professor
Charles Samuel is the C. A. Storke II Professor. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Montana State and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from U.C. Berkeley. He was a Damon Runyon Scholar at Duke Univ. Med. Sch. where he began work on interferon. At UCSB he served as Director of the Interdepartmental Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Program (BMSE) from 1987-95, as Founding Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology from 1995-98, and again as MCDB Chair from 2001-04. He is an NIH Research Career Development Awardee, an NIH MERIT awardee, a FASEB Wellcome Professorship awardee, a Humboldt Forschungspreis recipient, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Journal of Interferon and Cytokine Research, and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Virology.
Chris Richardson received his B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego. His Ph.D. work in Joachim Li's lab at the University of California, San Francisco explored the regulation of DNA replication in budding yeast. His postdoctoral research in Jacob Corn's lab at UC Berkeley investigated DNA repair in mammalian cells and how DNA repair processes can be utilized for gene editing. He joined the MCDB faculty in 2019.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Richardson Lab
Job Titles:
- Member of the MCDB Leadership Team
- Faculty Graduate Advisor / Department
- Professor
Christy is a second year Statistics and Data Science major at UCSB. She joined the Louis Lab in Fall 2022, and is interested in the interdisciplinary field of data science and the applications of coding to studying neurology.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Teaching Professor
I hold a doctorate in immunology and hematopoietic stem cell development. My current work in biology education focuses on helping students thrive in college, especially those from marginalized backgrounds. My lab explores how sense of belonging impacts student persistence and success, as well as quantifying cognitive engagement linked to academic outcomes.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor of Materials at the University of California
Safinya's research revolves around elucidation of structures and interactions in assemblies of biological molecules and soft matter systems, including, liquid crystalline biological matter.
Cyrus R. Safinya is a Distinguished Professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His home department is Materials in the College of Engineering and he has joint appointments in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology department, and by courtesy, in the Physics department and the Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program. He received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Bates College (1975) and a PhD in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1981) for his studies on liquid crystal phase transitions in Professor Robert J. Birgeneau's group (currently Chancellor Emeritus, UC Berkeley and Distinguished Professor of Physics). He joined the Exxon Research & Engineering Company in 1981 working on the structure of complex fluids and biological membranes. He moved to UCSB in 1992. He was a Rothschild Fellow and a Visiting Directeur de Recherche at the Curie Institute in 1994 and a World Class University (WCU) Distinguished Visiting Professor at KAIST (Korean Advanced Institute of Science & Technology) between 2009 and 2013. Dr. Safinya is a Fellow of The American Physical Society (elected 1994) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (elected 1997).
Dr. Morse received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Harvard, his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and conducted postdoctoral research in molecular genetics at Stanford University. He was the Silas Arnold Houghton Associate Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty at UCSB. Honored by Scientific American as one of the top 50 technology innovators of 2006 for his development of bio-inspired, kinetically controlled routes to semiconductor thin films and nanoparticles, Morse was the 7th Kelly Lecturer in Materials and Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and the 3M Lecturer in Chemistry and Materials at the University of Vancouver. Elected a Fellow of the AAAS, the Materials Research Society and the Smithsonian Institution, he received a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, a Faculty Research Award from the American Cancer Society, and honors as Visiting Professor of Bio-Nano-Electronics in Japan and as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris and universities in Singapore and the UK. His students have received international recognition and awards in numerous symposia and international research meetings.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Ronald Keiflin Lab
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Duggan Professor and Distinguished Professor
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- Graduate Student / Denise Montell Lab
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- Wilcox Family Chair in BioMedicine
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- Graduate Student / Simpson Lab
Job Titles:
- Teaching Professor Emeritus
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor at the University of California
- Duggan Professor and
- Graduate Student / Craig Montell Lab
Dr. Craig Montell is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his B.A. from the UC Berkeley in 1978, and his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1983. He returned to UC Berkeley in 1984 as a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellow. It was there that he discovered the founding member of the Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) channel family. He was on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM), where he remained for nearly 25 years. At JHUSOM his group identified the founding mammalian TRP channel. Dr. Montell moved to the UCSB in 2013 as a Duggan Professor of MCDB. He is a recipient of an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, an ACS Junior Faculty Award. He received honorary doctorate degrees from the Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium in 2010 and from the Baylor College of Medicine in 2011. Dr. Montell is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in a winner of the NIH Director's Pioneer Award.
Dr. Denise Montell earned her B.S. degree in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the University of California, San Diego and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Stanford University. As an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution she developed a new model for studying cell motility in vivo using a powerful combination of cell biology and molecular genetic approaches. In 1990 she attained an independent junior faculty position at the Carnegie and in 1992 became an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, rising to the rank of Full Professor in 2002. At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine she served as Director of the Graduate Program in Biological Chemistry for 10 years and was the founding director of the Center for Cell Dynamics. Professor Montell joined the faculty of MCDB at UCSB in 2012. She has served on the Advisory Councils of the American Cancer Society, the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences, the American Society for Cell Biology, and the Gordon Research Conferences. She served as the 2020 President of the Genetics Society of America and serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute. She is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Professor Sears has been on the faculty at the University of California Santa Barbara campus since 1977 following completion of his postdoctoral studies on the biochemistry of murine MHC antigens in Stanley Nathenson's laboratory at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Prior to this, he earned his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry at Columbia University where he analyzed the kinetics of immunoglobulin heavy and light chain assembly for his doctoral thesis studies in Professor Sherman Beychok's laboratory, sparking his life-long interest in immunology. Since arriving at UCSB, the unifying theme of his research projects has been the analysis of various immunologically-related cell killing mechanisms. This work is underscored by a fundamental interest in understanding the function-structure relationships of proteins as reflected in the instructional web sites he has developed for his protein biochemistry and immunology courses.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Arias Lab
Job Titles:
- Upper Division Academic Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Associate Teaching Professor
Dr. Gonzalez earned a BS in Chemistry at Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, in Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico. He received his doctorate degree in 2013 from New Mexico State University, studying the regulation of cell adhesion by small GTPases during development. Later, he became interested in Discipline Based Educational Research, focusing in understanding how Active learning, learning communities and mentoring communities can reduce the disparities observed in higher education.
Job Titles:
- Research Professor
- Research Professor / Professor Emeritus
Dr. Orias earned his Ph.D. in Zoology in 1960 at the University of Michigan, where he studied mating type differentiation in Tetrahymena. He joined the UCSB faculty in 1959. He has served as Guest Professor at the Biological Institute of the Carlsberg Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark; Visiting Professor in the Anatomy Department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in Protistology, Universities of Camerino, Pisa and Padova, Italy; Guest Investigator in the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of California at Berkeley, CA, and as Invited Foreign Investigator in the Department of Developmental Biology of the Mitsubishi Kasei Institute of Life Sciences, Machida, Tokyo, Japan. He has served as President of the international Society of Protozoologists, member of the Genetics Study Section of NIH, and of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Protozoology, International Microbiology and Acta Protozoologica. Dr. Orias was a co-organizer of the 2nd International Ciliate Molecular Genetics meeting held here at UCSB in July 1986 and has recently organized international sessions and meetings on Tetrahymena Genomics. He served as Coordinator of the International Tetrahymena Genome Project and in 2002 he organized the DNA sequencing of the Tetrahymena somatic (macronuclear) genome on behalf of the research community.
Job Titles:
- Contracts and Grants Manager
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- Graduate Student / Weimbs Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student Researcher / Ken Kosik Lab
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- Undergraduate Academic Advisor
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- Member of the MCDB Leadership Team
- Department Chair
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Richardson Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Hayes Lab
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- Graduate Student / Stowers Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Ryan Stowers Lab
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- Graduate Student / William Smith Lab
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- Graduate Student / Goard Lab
Jaycie is a 2nd-year undergraduate student pursuing a BS in Biopsychology with a minor in Spanish. She is interested in learning about olfaction and is very excited to be working on a project looking at how the activity of single olfactory sensory neuron mediates larval chemotaxis. Jaycie joined the LouisLab in Winter 2022. In addition to the research task, Jaycie also helps with taking care of the lab fly stock.
The Volland Lab focuses on exploring and understanding uncultivated, giant bacteria, like Thiomargarita magnifica, to challenge traditional views of bacterial life and uncover fundamental processes of life through innovative microscopy and genomic techniques.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor
- Graduate Student Researcher / Joel Rothman Lab
- Wilcox Family Chair in Biotechnology / Director, Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Ma Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Rothman Lab
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- Graduate Student / Hayes Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student Researcher / Ken Kosik Lab
Job Titles:
- Harriman Professor of Neuroscience
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Carolina Arias Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student Researcher / Morrissey Lab / Research
- Student
Biography
Kirstin graduated from the University of Texas in Austin with a double major in Biochemistry and Neuroscience. In undergrad, she developed a fascination with sensory transduction through research on magneto-reception in C. elegans. Continued interest in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of sensory integration led her to join the Louis Lab in 2020. She is now investigating how the nervous system accumulates, processes, and filters sources of input. She also hopes to explore the influence of neuromodulation on neural computations.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Kranzfelder Lab / Biology Education Research Removing Systemic Barriers That Prevent Student Success in Undergraduate Biology Programs Epigenetics Genom
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Ikuko Smith Lab
Job Titles:
- Academic Personnel Analyst
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Zach Ma Lab
Dr. Louis received his BA/MA in Theoretical Physics from the Free University of Brussels (Belgium). For his PhD research, he was a pre-doctoral fellow of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). He graduated in Systems Biology from the University of Cambridge. His doctoral thesis focused on modeling the function of a gene regulatory network during Drosophila development. During the completion of his thesis, Dr. Louis became increasingly interested in the function of neural networks. He joined the laboratory of Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University where he studied the mechanisms underlying the detection of olfactory signals in the Drosophila larva. At end of his post-doctoral training, Dr. Louis became a junior Group Leader at the EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Unit of the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona (Spain). As an independent investigator, he worked on delineating how orientation decisions emerge from neural computations carried out by the larval brain. Since Summer 2016, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Graduate Student / Max Wilson Lab
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- Graduate Student / Weimbs Lab
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- Assistant Professor
- Graduate Student / Meghan Morrissey Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Denise Montell Lab
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- Graduate Student / C Montell Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Acosta - Alvear Lab
Job Titles:
- Associate Teaching Professor / Associate Dean - Division of Undergraduate Education
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / C Montell Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Max Wilson Lab
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- Graduate Student / Thomas Weimbs Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Brooke Gardner Lab
Nitesh completed his PhD in 2018 at the National Center for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, India. During his PhD, he studied the role of multiple sensory cues in odor localization by vinegar flies, D. melanogaster. Apart from this, Nitesh has also worked in collaboration in different teams to study antennal positioning behavior of hawkmoths, D. nerii and has also played a role in designing experiments to study recursive learning in humans. His core interest is in understanding the behavioral algorithms of animals for tracking multimodal cues to achieve goal-oriented tasks. Since May, 2021, Nitesh has joined the Louis lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Goard Lab
Job Titles:
- Assistant Teaching Professor
The overarching focus of the Kranzfelder lab is developing evidence-based knowledge, practices, and assessments to improve biology (and STEM) teaching and learning at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, especially at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs).
Philip graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2016. As an undergraduate, he developed an interest in dynamical systems and control and investigated the applications of human-like decision making strategies for autonomous robots. At UC Santa Barbara, he now seeks to understand the neural implementation of perceptual decision making in the Drosophila larva. He is currently a graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at UC Santa Barbara under the joint supervision of Jeff Moehlis and Matthieu Louis.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Craig Montell Lab
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- Graduate Student / Richardson Lab
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- Member of the MCDB Leadership Team
- Undergraduate Vice - Chair
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student Researcher / Joel Rothman Lab
I am training to study epigenetic regulation, embryonic development, and genetics of behavior in nematode C. elegans.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / De Tomaso Lab
Biography
Sidharth is currently a 2nd-year undergraduate student pursuing a major in Biopsychology. He is deeply interested in the applications of mathematical tools in the life sciences, specifically Neuroscience, and he hopes to explore and learn about how mathematical modeling can be used to explain and understand the complicated processes of larval behavior and the associated neural pathways. He began working in the Louis Lab in spring 2020, where he is currently conducting behavioral experiment and performing data analysis.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Simpson Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Brooke Gardner Lab
I'm interested in how cells use quality control pathways to maintain organelles such as the peroxisome.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Hayes Lab
Job Titles:
- Member of the MCDB Leadership Team
- Management Services Officer
Tanish is currently a freshman at UC Berkeley studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and his research interests include deep learning, computer vision, computational biology, and neuroscience. He joined Louis lab as a high school student after the UCSB Research Mentorship Program in Fall 2021, and is now a undergraduate research assistant investigating the evolutionary differences in the neuromechanics of different Drosophila larva species using computer vision.
Job Titles:
- Director, Pharmacology & Biotechnology Program, Academic Coordinator / Lecturer
Biography
Thuc graduated with a B.S. in Neuroscience from UCLA in 2017. She first became interested in the brain as a high school student because she thought that the brain spoke a beautiful language that she would love to understand. Her interest was further refined to System and Computational Neuroscience through her undergraduate research experience. Now as a graduate student in the Dynamical Neuroscience program and Louis Lab at UCSB, Thuc is working on understanding neuronal responses individually and within a circuit, and in turn, how all these intricate interactions influence navigational behaviors using Drosophila larvae as the study model. Though a pure neuroscientist by training, Thuc is deeply inspired by the interdisciplinary culture in Neuroscience and very happy to bring forth her other loves for equations, foreign languages, and art into this exciting journey.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Simpson Lab
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / William Smith Lab
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Graduate Student / Ma Lab
- Graduate Student / Zach Ma Lab