STEFAN OLINE PHD
Associate Professional Specialist
Stefan received his PhD in 2015 from the lab of Mike Burger at Lehigh University. He worked with Mike Halassa at NYU and MIT optimizing tools for physiology and photometry.
Email: soline@princeton.edu
MAE GUTHMAN PHD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Mae received her PhD from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2019 working with Molly Huntsman and Diego Restrepo on the cell-type specific control exerted by GABAergic interneurons on the microcircuitry and plasticity of the mouse basolateral amygdala. Broadly, she is interested in the role of and mechanisms underlying neuromodulatory coordination of neural circuits during social behaviors. Her postdoctoral research focuses on the role of estrogen in orchestrating the activity of neurons during various social behaviors in mice.
Email: eguthman@princeton.edu
BARTUL MIMICA PHD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bartul received his PhD in 2019 from the lab of Jonathan Whitlock at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, combining e-phys with 3D tracking to study postural representation in the rat neocortex. True to his interest in ethology, he will continue his postdoctoral work exploring the midbrain circuits involved in sonic behaviors.
Email: bmimica@princeton.edu
MEENAKSHI ASOKAN PHD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Meenakshi received her PhD in 2022 from Harvard University, working with Daniel Polley on the transformation from sensation to perception and the underlying neural representations and plasticity across sensory and limbic hierarchies. For her postdoctoral work, she is interested in the neural circuits and computations that drive flexible state-dependent social behaviors, and she hopes to synthesize the reductionism in sensory neuroscience with the richness and complexity in naturalistic social interactions.
Email: masokan94@gmail.com
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NANCY MACK PHD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Nancy received her PhD in 2022 from Drexel University, working with Wen-Jun Gao to study sex differences in prefrontal cortical circuits involved in social investigation through use of functional manipulation tools and fiber photometry. Nancy joined the Falkner lab for her postdoctoral work to dive further into her interests in the neural circuit computations underlying the intersection of internal states, sex-differences, and behavior.
Email: nm7448@princeton.edu
TOMOHITO MINAKUCHI
Graduate Student
Tomohito (Tomo) completed his medical degree at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. In his medical school, he got training in molecular biology in the Siomi lab, and circuitry neuroscience in the Tanaka & Takata lab. He also worked with Dr Hideyuki Okano, performing calcium imaging of rat and marmoset cortex after graduating.
Email: tomohito - at - princeton.edu
DAKOTA BLACKMAN
Graduate Student
Dakota completed her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience at Barnard College, where she worked with Josh Gordon and Elizabeth Bauer, studying the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms underlying anxiety. After graduating, she spent two years working as a Research Assistant at Rockefeller University with Winrich Freiwald and Eric Schmidt, with the goal of developing and applying molecular profiling techniques to projection neurons relevant to social cognition.
Email: dakotab@princeton.edu
JORGE IRAVEDRA GARCIA
Graduate Student
Jorge completed his bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. He worked in the laboratory of Dr. Gregory Quirk researching how circuits from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala and striatum regulate active avoidance. His graduate work currently focuses on investigating how subcortical brain networks regulate drive and reinforcement of social behaviors.
Email: jmig@princeton.edu
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DAVID ALLEN
Graduate Student
After receiving his bachelors in behavioral neuroscience at Northeastern University, David worked in the lab of Todd Anthony to study the regulation of fear and anxiety-like behaviors in lateral septum. David is interested in developing novel computational approaches to investigate innate mouse behavior. Specifically, his thesis focuses on how mice form representations of familiar versus conspecific territories in the brain, and how social experiences shape different marking and territory-dependent behaviors.
Email: da9769@princeton.edu
OLIVIA TIMMERMANS
Research Technician
Olivia completed her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at Princeton, where she worked in the Falkner lab to explore the behavioral and neural mechanisms that underlie social hierarchies in groups of mice. Broadly, she is interested in social behavior and is excited to continue to investigate the relationship between neural states and social dominance.
Email: oct@princeton.edu
