Austin Coley.

Austin Coley

Assistant professor of neurobiology
David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles

Austin Coley is assistant professor of neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. His lab focuses on the neural substrates, neural population activity and synaptic properties involved in depressive-like behaviors.

He earned his B.S. in biology at North Carolina Central University and his M.S. in cell physiology at Case Western Reserve University. He then earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Drexel University under the mentorship of Wen-Jun Gao, studying the synaptic proteins and mechanisms involved in schizophrenia. As a postdoctoral fellow in Kay Tye’s lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, he studied the effect of neural circuits on behavior, and state-dependent and region-specific cellular aberrations implicated in neuropsychiatric conditions.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Research image of mitochondrial activity in the mouse amygdala and hippocampus.

The fast-expanding repertoire of mitochondria in the brain

More than cellular powerhouses, these organelles also seem to help synapses communicate, support memory formation and even shape behavior.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
3 July 2026 | 7 min read
Two fingers turning a small dial.

When autistic kids grow up, Chapter 5: The war dial

“You have to reshape the whole system.” Tempest McDonald earns a measure of peace.

By Brady Huggett
2 July 2026 | 42 min listen
Red note stuck in a stack of paper.

Scientists decry conference’s use of hidden prompts to snare AI peer reviews

The invisible messages, which instruct large language models to use telltale phrases in a peer-review report, are effective in catching artificial-intelligence misuse but also erode trust, some say.

By Dalmeet Singh Chawla
1 July 2026 | 4 min read