Interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Marielena Sosa, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder
Lab start date: August 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab aims to understand memory formation and its role in guiding future behavior, with a particular focus on how memory systems adapt to the physiological demands on the brain and body. A branch of the lab focuses on the dramatic effects of pregnancy and the postpartum period on memory and cognition in the maternal brain. During and after pregnancy, alterations in memory and mood are extremely common, and the brain undergoes tremendous structural plasticity. However, our knowledge of how and why these changes occur is strikingly limited, particularly around how hormones modulate neural activity patterns. I feel passionately that progress in this area can have a real impact on women’s health, in addition to revealing how incredibly plastic neural circuits can be in the adult brain.
What parts about opening a lab have surprised you so far? What do you wish you had known beforehand?
I wish I had known how often as a PI you have to task-switch between really big-picture thinking—Which scientific question should we tackle first with the resources we have? What should be Aim 3 of this proposal that I might complete in five years? What will it mean if that hypothesis is correct?—and really small-scale, mundane thinking—How many boxes of cover slips should I buy to start? Did I respond to that email about lab renovations? I didn’t realize how much time and energy this task-switching would take, or how many decisions I would be holding in my head at once. It’s exciting, though. I hope that, just as with most other aspects of this job, it is a learned skill that will improve with practice!
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your own lab?
In my Ph.D. lab, we often did a “roundtable” at the beginning of lab meetings, where everyone would have a chance to share what they had been working on in the past week, celebrate small successes and get advice on any challenges they were having. I am implementing this in my own lab meetings, as I felt it was a valuable way to normalize obstacles and solve them as a team. It can also help keep everyone invested in one another’s projects. Once the lab has grown a bit, I also plan to pair any incoming junior trainees with a senior lab member for technical training and collaboration, to start. This would initiate clear discussions about co-authorship early on, as well as milestones at which the junior trainee should branch off and dive into their independent project.
Debbie Yee, incoming assistant professor of psychological brain sciences and psychiatry, University of Iowa
Lab start date: August 2026
What are your lab’s aims and major research questions?
Our lab seeks to investigate how motivation, affect and cognitive control interact in the brain and body. We use a multimodal approach, including functional MRI, pharmacology, computational modeling and digital assessments of mental health to understand how neural and physiological processes are dysregulated in mental illness. I am particularly interested in understanding the functional role of serotonin in stress, and its influence on decision-making. Establishing a neurocomputational framework of serotonin function (and its relationship to other neuromodulators such as dopamine and noradrenaline) can provide key insights and testable hypotheses for how motivational and affective processes are disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders. I’m excited to lead a team of researchers to investigate these questions and probe affective processes in a more comprehensive and holistic manner.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your own lab?
I believe that our science is only as useful as it can be replicated—and as such, I encourage all my trainees to document their code and analysis using GitHub or Open Science Framework (or a similar platform). During my graduate training working with Todd Braver at Washington University in St. Louis, we developed analysis workflows for large-scale fMRI and behavioral datasets using open-source programming languages (e.g., R, Python, Bash), which have been useful for sharing these projects years after their completion. I plan to continue adopting these practices to ensure rigorous, reproducible science—an especially crucial step as we aim to translate basic science frameworks to better understand mental illness.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
A past mentor once told me that the most important thing I can do is to “be generative.” Science is constantly evolving, and new discoveries can change the status quo unexpectedly. For instance, recent developments in artificial-intelligence tools and new rapid-acting antidepressant treatments are both transformative and disruptive to our current research practices. I’m excited about the potential to leverage these new techniques and treatments to advance clinical science. Staying curious and open helps me grow as a scientist and ground our lab’s research program in addressing significant real-world problems with the greatest impact.
Clara Ortega-de San Luis, Ramón y Cajal researcher, Universidad de Jaén
Lab start date: January 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
We aim to understand how memories are formed, stored and retrieved at the cellular and molecular levels. Memories define who we are, yet the biological mechanisms behind them are still a mystery. We are interested in understanding what molecular and cellular signals drive their formation, preserve their integrity and determine their accessibility over time. The most exciting thing about our research is that, ultimately, understanding memory means understanding how our brain performs a function that directly shapes who we are, what we do and how we think. The techniques we use are another great source of inspiration to me; the fact that they allow us to follow information throughout the brain is honestly fascinating. I feel very lucky.
What aspects of opening a lab have surprised you?
I wasn’t fully prepared for how much pressure there would be, or how lost I would feel at times. There are so many big decisions to make and things to learn, and progress is, at times, slow. It is a fairly universal experience in the transition from postdoctoral researcher to principal investigator, so at least we’re all in the same boat. Step by step, I allow myself to make mistakes as I try to enjoy the process!
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your own lab?
The traditions and routines I loved the most and plan to keep were the ones that brought the team together in a healthy and fun way. For example, in my previous lab, we had an annual summer competition that included activities such as laser tag, bowling, escape rooms or axe throwing. Teams were drawn at random from members in the lab, and at the end of the competition, the winners got to keep a homemade “Tournament Cup” on their desks for the entire year. We collected so many stories from those events, and they made the lab feel like so much more than just a workplace. I hope to keep that spirit alive in my own group.
Jonathan Tsay, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, Carnegie Mellon University
Lab start date: September 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
Our lab’s work focuses on how people acquire, adapt and retain motor skills. We’re especially interested in how uncertainty in perception—particularly proprioception, our “hidden sixth sense”—shapes the way we learn new movements. Current questions we aim to address include: How do humans problem-solve our way through learning complex motor skills? And what brain systems support these processes? Here, the cerebellum—one of the most intriguing yet neglected engines of human learning and behavior—sits front and center. Many mechanistic insights about learning come from highly reduced motor tasks, such as reaching, but I’m especially excited to push our theories into the real world—using meaningful yet tractable skills, such as learning sign language, as a testbed. To this end, we have developed an online, markerless tracking system that uses a webcam to track hand movements and deliver personalized, performance-based feedback. Just as cognitive tutors have transformed education by offering tailored guidance in domains such as math, I imagine a future in which physical tutors do the same for movement—helping us learn new skills, enhance performance and even support rehabilitation.
What aspects of opening a lab have surprised you?
Since starting the lab, it has been easy to get pulled in different directions. But I am realizing that’s not always a bad thing! In fact, it’s often what makes this job so dynamic and fulfilling. I have a 1-year-old at home and am in a department with experts in developmental psychology, so I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to the intersection of development and motor learning. I try to keep an adventurous spirit—following the questions that spark curiosity.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Before starting my lab, a mentor told me to embrace “shitty first drafts” and to recognize that everything is a work in progress. The grants and papers I put out, even when I try my best, can always be improved. It’s far better to share the work, let the community point out my blind spots, and learn from that feedback than to let a manuscript sit in a drawer for years.
Mattia Chini, principal investigator, University of Liège
Lab start date: January 2026
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
We study early brain development at the intersection of systems and computational neuroscience. Early brain development feels so alien and costly, evolutionarily speaking. The brain builds huge transient structures that will soon vanish, and most neurons barely fire. In our data, about 99 percent of mouse prefrontal neurons stay below 1 hertz in the first postnatal days—roughly 10 to 50 times lower than in adults. I find this mysterious and fascinating. Is there an advantage to starting so silently? The long periods of silence are the first thing that you notice when looking at neonatal brain activity, and it’s still what fascinates me the most about what I study. To address these questions, we combine large-scale in-vivo electrophysiology, opto- and chemogenetics, and spiking neural network modeling to look at how inhibitory circuits influence network dynamics and neural timescales as they mature, and how their disruption results in neurodevelopmental conditions.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
Lab outings were very outdoorsy in my previous lab. I look forward to carrying on that tradition. Luckily, the lab is on top of a wooded hill, surrounded by great cycling opportunities. The Liège–Bastogne–Liège, one of the oldest cycling races in Europe, passed right by the institute this year! Long term, I dream of a lab retreat in an Alpine hut, close to where I grew up in a small village in the middle of the Dolomites in Trentino, Italy.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Grow slowly. Stay close to the experiments, rigs and data. Coffee and snacks are consumables, and I should budget for them.
Lauren Kreeger, assistant professor of otorhinolaryngology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Lab start date: January 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
Our lab is interested in specialized neurons in the mammalian auditory brainstem called octopus cells. These incredible neurons have extreme electrical properties that enable them to detect sounds in the environment that occur within less than one millisecond of each other. We combine methods in anatomy and electrophysiology to understand how computations with strict requirements, such as detecting rapid sounds, can adapt over a lifetime of changing sensory experiences. I am most excited for our experiments that examine how descending inputs to the brainstem can influence when and how a neuron responds to a complex sound.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
During my postdoc, lab meeting presentations ended with an “away from the bench” slide. This was a chance to share a nonscientific update with the group. It could be a photo from a hike you went on last week, a cute picture of your cat or a funny moment from the show you’ve been catching up on. My lab will follow this tradition to foster a culture where we feel comfortable celebrating who we are with each other.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Starting a new lab means you are going to get a ton of conflicting advice and guidance about what you should do. The best advice I was given was to hear everyone out but only put into action what feels true to yourself and your vision for your science. I was reminded that there are many parallel paths to success.
Francesca Mastrogiuseppe, research group leader, International School for Advanced Studies
Lab start date: October 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
We aim to build mathematical models that help us understand how cortical neurons exchange and transform information. The brain’s hardware is extraordinarily complex: It is highly distributed, relying on millions of cells and intricately organized into recurrent loops of connectivity at both local and global scales. Understanding how behavior emerges from coordinated interactions within these networks by intuition alone, without the support of mathematical models, is extremely challenging. We therefore study simplified models and seek rigorous ways to link them to experimental data through close collaborations with experimental partners. Currently, one of our core research questions focuses on how the structure of mesoscopic cortical circuits, with their anatomical organization within and across areas, constrains and shapes how the brain learns and interacts with the world. Over the next few years, I am especially excited to investigate the mechanisms that link together the structure of anatomical projections to the structure of emergent tuning. Neural network models of cognitive tasks provide a natural starting point for this question.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your lab?
At both institutions where I trained, there was a tradition of giving departing lab members a book. Lab members would write handwritten dedications inside the books, and reading them now brings back vivid memories and reminds me of the wonderful people I met along the way. I plan to continue this tradition by giving a book to everyone who leaves the lab. I’ve started thinking about a title that reflects both our vision and the inspiring environment surrounding us.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
A mentor once warned me that one of the biggest mistakes a supervisor can make is assuming that younger scientists think and work the same way the supervisor once did. I try to listen carefully, observe closely and adapt the support I offer to the person in front of me. I have learned that trainees often provide unexpected answers and behave in surprising ways, and that—more often than not—this is both enriching and fun.
Anna Schroeder, assistant professor of systemic neuroscience, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich
Lab start date: April 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab studies how internal states—emotions, motivations and physiological needs—emerge from neural circuits and guide behavior. Focusing on the zona incerta as a key integrative hub, we use cutting-edge molecular, cellular and circuit-level technologies in behaving mice to dissect how this region shapes state-dependent actions. We are also investigating deep brain stimulation as a therapeutic approach to modulate these circuits in psychiatric disease. I am especially excited to see whether the circuit-level mechanistic insights we gain in the years ahead can refine existing neuromodulation therapies or inspire new applications. At the same time, we hope to build multiscale models that explain how coordinated neural activity reconfigures circuits to reprioritize goals, resolve competing drives and flexibly update actions as environments change.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your lab?
My Ph.D. supervisor held yearly two-way feedback sessions, which I plan to implement in my lab. We would each fill out a short form in advance—reflecting on ourselves and on each other—and then we would meet to talk it through. It was a great way to think about past goals and see how far we had come, while also having space to share concerns or dreams for the year ahead.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
One piece of advice I heard repeatedly from senior colleagues was that the biggest make-or-break factor in starting a lab is choosing the right team. Always meet candidates in person, trust your “gut feeling” and don’t overlook red flags. Your team will shape your lab’s culture and determine its success! It’s much better to wait than to hire the wrong person. I took this advice very much to heart when I started recruiting.
Daniel Levenstein, assistant professor of neuroscience, Yale University
Lab start date: August 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
The overarching aim of my lab is to understand offline learning in the sleeping brain. While you sleep, your brain is home to a zoo of self-organized activity patterns, which it uses to change itself—to learn from things that happened during the day and set itself up to learn new things tomorrow. My lab will try to mimic that process in artificial neural networks to better understand how it works, develop new approaches to artificial intelligence and, hopefully, understand how it can go wrong in psychiatric conditions. We’ll start by tackling two major questions: How does the rest of the brain extract generalized knowledge from hippocampal replay, and how does the hippocampus itself change during replay such that it can form new memories in the future without forgetting the old ones?
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
I did my Ph.D. in György Buzsáki’s lab. Whenever anyone left the lab, György would give an awkward speech about the story of the person’s time in the lab. The person leaving would, in turn, give their own speech from their perspective and talk about what they learned from György and the other lab members. It was all quite touching, and I think it really helped the lab feel like a community that valued the people who came through and the time they spent there. It also showed new lab members just how nonlinear research can be—no one ended up doing the project they had planned when they joined. I’ve seen a lot of amazing speeches, and I hope to have a similar “celebration of the time in the lab” practice in my own group. The other thing I’d like to carry forward is that the lab always has lunch together. Both my Ph.D. and postdoc labs did this, and it’s quite nice for building a sense of community.
Qihong Lu, presidential assistant professor, City University of Hong Kong
Lab start date: January 2026
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
In my lab, we aim to use neural network models as model organisms to understand what cognitive architecture is effective for the kind of computational problems the brain must solve, including the processes behind the strategic use of episodic memory. Episodic memory enables us to rapidly encode information upon a single exposure and retrieve it later, which is essential for adaptive memory-based behavior in humans. Yet many fundamental questions remain unclear. Moreover, EM might be an important missing piece in advancing modern artificial intelligence. How does the brain use EM to support cognition? How does the brain coordinate EM with other memory systems? What is the optimal coordination strategy, and to what extent does the human brain implement this optimal strategy? I’m excited by the synergy between AI and human cognition. A better understanding of human cognition could inspire future AI algorithms, especially in the domain of memory.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
I plan to use a “slide stack”—a practice that worked well for me when I was a trainee. Basically, every trainee will maintain a running Google Slides document, and every week, the trainee can add updates about their projects. This allows me to preview everything before one-on-one meetings, making them more efficient. For the trainee, the slide stack will act as an archive of checkpoints—which is helpful for “debugging” things throughout the projects—and as a template for making polished materials for talks and papers.
Shawn Rhoads, assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Lab start date: January 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab studies how our brains help us understand and connect with others. We want to know how people make inferences about others’ mental states, learn from interactions and make decisions in social contexts—and how these processes affect mental health and well-being. We are especially interested in how disruptions in social cognition are linked to psychiatric symptoms and aim to translate this research for application in medicine and policy. We use a combination of tools, including functional neuroimaging, direct brain recordings and computational models, to explore these questions. I’m most excited about building computational cognitive models of dynamic social interactions. We are combining these models with both functional MRI and intracranial electrophysiological recordings in humans to get a deeper look at how the brain supports social cognition. We also aim to move beyond more traditional lab tasks to more natural, ecologically valid contexts, which may reveal new insights about why social difficulties arise in psychopathologies such as depression or anxiety.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your lab?
I’d like to organize a few lab-wide hackathons per year to create a space where lab members and collaborators can test out new ideas together, build computational tools, learn from each other and share resources. When I was a trainee, these gatherings were great for sharing knowledge and resources, building a sense of community and helping foster a culture of open science. I want to bring that same open, collaborative spirit into my lab.
Zuri Ayana Sullivan, assistant professor of biology, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lab start date: January 2026
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab studies the biology of sickness—a state of altered physiology and behavior generated by brain-immune system interactions during infection. We are interested in two fundamental questions: What are the neuroimmune mechanisms that lead to sickness during infection, and how does sickness influence host and microbial fitness? A widely held assumption is that sickness symptoms are adaptive for the host, but we generally lack evidence for whether this is true and, if so, in what contexts? I’m really excited to ask questions about how sickness behaviors—such as anorexia, fever and social withdrawal—influence infected hosts and pathogens, to understand if sickness is adaptive and, if so, why, when and for whom?
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will implement in your lab?
During my Ph.D., lab members led weekly discussions about topics outside our expertise or primary area of study. This had a huge impact on me as a scientist—these discussions expanded my creativity, encouraged curiosity and got me out of my intellectual comfort zone. I’m excited to establish a similar practice in my lab.
Alexandra Decker, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, Washington University in St. Louis
Lab start date: January 2026
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
Brains are dynamic systems, constantly shifting and adapting from one moment to the next. My lab asks how these fluctuations shape attention, learning and memory—and what this variability reveals about the principles that make our brains so flexible and adaptive. I’m excited that I get to keep learning and exploring the idea that variability in cognition isn’t a “bug” but a hallmark of an adaptive system designed to balance competing needs, such as exploration and focus; learning and predicting; and stability and flexibility.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
In my previous lab, we had a “big, crazy ideas” lab meeting, where everyone pitched bold ideas with no data. I’m adopting that—and adding a brief “anything‑cool‑I‑learned‑this‑week” round before each lab meeting, where we share something new we learned that week, such as why puffins and penguins look similar but aren’t related or how chess champions strategize.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
One of my colleagues is always reminding me to “just relax, because nothing is under control.” This idea first made me laugh and then terrified me, but now I have it pasted as a sticker on my laptop. Remembering that much of success and failure is outside my control frees me to focus on learning, doing my best, having empathy and not worrying too much about the outcome.
Hannah Shoenhard, assistant professor of biology, Bryn Mawr College
Lab start date: January 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
Missing sleep can interfere with the ability to consolidate long-term memories, not just in humans but in many different animals across many different memory paradigms. My lab is using genetic and behavioral methods in fruit flies to compare two forms of memory: one that is consolidated during sleep and one that doesn’t require sleep to consolidate. We hope to discover how cellular and metabolic strategies for memory consolidation are deployed differently in sleep versus awake states. This research might even one day point toward strategies for supporting memory, even in people who get poor sleep.
Over the summer, one of my students replicated an odd incidental finding that I had made during my postdoc. It was one of those things that didn’t really answer the question I was asking at the time, so I set it aside. But now that I’m a PI, I’m excited to develop that into its own story. It’s early days yet, and we still have a ton of work to do to validate the initial finding, but if it pans out, it’s going to be really cool.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Order Drosophila incubators at least 120 days in advance, and make sure you have a 20-amp outlet to plug them into!
Actually, though, the best “advice” I got was more of an attitude. Another postdoc from the Sehgal Lab, where I trained, and who got a faculty position, received a going-away present of a flint and steel. The joke was that when you start your own lab, you’re setting up from scratch—it’s on you to get the metaphorical fires burning. At the same time, it’s a gentle reminder not to expect as much of your science productivity in the first couple of “flint and steel” years. In an established lab, it’s easy to take for granted not just the equipment but also the troubleshooting expertise, the lab culture and the network of intellectual and emotional support that surrounds you. It takes time to build that technology back up.
Isabel Christie, principal investigator, University of Sheffield
Lab start date: October 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab studies oxygen homeostasis in the brain. Our research focuses on understanding how the brain ensures it receives adequate oxygen and how oxygen insufficiency contributes to age-related cognitive impairment. In the past, I have used MRI methods such as arterial spin labeling to study brain blood flow. For my future research, I am excited to start using hyperpolarized xenon. This is a gaseous MRI contrast agent that diffuses into the brain tissue a bit like oxygen. Hyperpolarized xenon is already used in human research, so there is a good chance of being able to translate my findings to humans. I am excited about working with physicists to probe how gas exchange in the brain might be characterized and measured.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
The best advice I received came from Harald Sontheimer at the University of Virginia. He said, “What happens when your experiment doesn’t work out? You do it again. What happens when your paper is rejected? You submit it again. The only reason you have made it this far is due to your persistence. From your track record, it’s clear you are not going to stop being persistent, so you are going to be fine.” You cannot argue with Harry’s logic. When you are feeling anxious, often logical thinking goes out the window. But I have never doubted my ability to be persistent, so this conversation helped me gain confidence.
Jacob Miller, assistant professor of psychology, University of Miami
Lab start date: January 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
We are interested in how the architecture of the brain supports the remarkable array of higher-order cognition and human behaviors. For example, what brain circuits and processes support memory and cognitive control, and how are they implemented to enable flexible behavior? Why is the human brain limited in memory and processing capacity? And how do our short- and long-term memory systems interact with each other? I’m excited to extend the approaches and ideas of longitudinal, individualized experimental designs for human neuroimaging to a wider array of questions. How might memory representations and processes change not only across learning, but over long timescales of aging and cognitive decline?
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
I’m lucky to have had an amazing training and gained familiarity with a breadth of methods and topics. From this, I firmly believe that there is no “holy” method or level of analysis in neuroscience and psychology. The questions we are interested in dictate the techniques, methods and inferences we use—all with their own set of assumptions and drawbacks. Piecing these methods and approaches together with clever experiments is what will advance our knowledge base.
Kauê Costa, assistant professor of psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Lab start date: January 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab aims to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of learning. Our research questions focus on understanding how neuromodulatory signaling in basal ganglia and frontal cortical circuits regulates these processes. To answer these questions, we use a combination of behavioral, systems, cellular and genetic tools in rat models, combined with computational modeling of learning and neural function. Most research in the field focuses on explicit learning, tasks in which learning produces an almost immediate change in behavioral responses. However, arguably, most “real-world” learning is latent, meaning we acquire information without immediately changing how we act, but we still use that information to guide future behavior. In my lab, we are digging into the mechanisms of latent learning to uncover how the brain decides what to learn and when to use the acquired information. These are challenging but extremely exciting and informative experiments that offer unique insight into the inner workings of the brain.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you implement in your own lab?
In my previous lab, my mentor gave us as much freedom as possible to decide on our projects but centralized all decisions that could potentially cause strife. Things like room scheduling, equipment sharing, use of limited consumables, and so on were all directly set by him. The reasoning is that trainees should not fight among themselves, and if anyone was unhappy with the allocation of resources, then that resentment should be directed at him, the PI, not a fellow lab member. Having had experience with different models, I recognized that this was wonderful for lab morale, and I apply the same principle in my own lab.
Matthias Nau, assistant professor of computational cognitive neuroscience, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Lab start date: January 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab investigates the general principles underlying active vision and memory through naturalistic multi-task studies, behavioral tracking and neuroimaging. We aim to identify behavioral and neural patterns shared across perception, memory and imagery tasks, and to understand how these patterns relate to participants’ reported experiences. Our work is grounded in the idea that common mechanisms underlie experiences across domains that are typically studied using separate, specialized tasks, and that new generalizable concepts are needed to describe them. As part of this research, we also develop open-source artificial-intelligence tools for cognitive neuroscience, such as camera-free magnetic-resonance-based eye tracking. I’m excited every day that my work lets me explore the most fascinating questions, such as how mental and physiological states relate and how we can create theories and tools to explain them together. Alongside functional MRI and eye tracking, we are also exploring new techniques, such as combined EEG and voice recordings. It makes me feel like a student as much as a teacher, and that’s exciting.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Right before I started, I asked one of my mentors, Dwight Kravitz, for advice. He said, “Just get things done!” I found it hilarious at the time, but here’s the wisdom: As a new principal investigator, you have to get comfortable making decisions quickly and moving forward. That’s not to say you shouldn’t care, but often any decision is better than none, and there’s rarely a single right answer. When I catch myself overthinking, I think back to that funny moment with Dwight, and it helps. I’ve been lucky to receive lots of great advice from others as well.
Rachel Parkinson, incoming group leader, Queen Mary University
Lab start date: October 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab focuses on how environmental stressors, such as pesticides, nutritional deficits and thermal extremes, affect the brain and behavior of insect pollinators. We develop high-throughput methods to study sublethal effects and build predictive models that generalize across species, including those that are difficult to test directly. Our key questions include: How do pollutants alter sensory processing and behavioral decisions in bees? How can we use AI to accelerate biological data synthesis, and how reliable and interpretable are these tools for scientific discovery? The flood of disconnected studies on environmental impacts is overwhelming, and I want to change that. I’m most excited about building tools that bridge disciplines—bringing together ecotoxicology, neurobiology and AI. Though my core passion is understanding sensory systems and animal decision-making, I’m increasingly driven by a broader goal: helping the scientific community extract clearer insights from complex data and accelerate environmental risk assessment.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Early in my career, someone told me, “Don’t forget to enjoy it.” That stuck. Science comes with stress and uncertainty, especially during transitions like starting a lab, but it’s also a huge privilege. I try to step back during the chaos, remember why I’m doing this, and keep focused on the long game: curiosity, impact and love of the work.
Janet Song, assistant professor, Harvard University
Lab start date: July 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab studies the genetic basis of how the human brain evolved and how human-specific changes to the brain affect neurological diseases. I hope that work from my lab will make it possible to quickly and accurately pinpoint the exact human-specific genetic variants that underlie specific traits that have evolved in humans, such as larger brain size and changes in neural connectivity. Most work on the genetics of the human brain has focused on cell types, but our brain is so much more than a static collection of cells. I’m interested in using genetic and genomic approaches to study neural circuitry formation and evolution, and examine how the brain interacts with environmental perturbations.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
My Ph.D. lab did 15-minute “Bone of the Week” presentations at the end of lab meetings, in which lab members would present on a scientific topic completely unrelated to their research. Some examples included why chocolate causes nosebleeds and gut-brain connections. I thought this was a great way to expose people to new ideas or fields, and I plan to implement this in my own lab.
Ana Gonzalez-Rueda, lecturer, University of Glasgow
Lab start date: September 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
In my lab, we want to understand how brain circuits adapt to support flexible behavior. Our work focuses on how sensory information gets turned into action, and how this process changes depending on context, internal state or behavioral demands. The big question is: How do sensorimotor circuits stay flexible while remaining functional in the face of change? Humans have evolved to be highly adaptable, not just to learn new things but also to flexibly respond to changing internal states and environmental conditions. I’m fascinated by the mechanisms—including synaptic plasticity, changes in neuronal excitability and structural rewiring—that allow circuits to adapt in real time to support different behavioral demands.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
One thing I’d like to establish is the oldie-but-goodie, post-COVID-lost tradition of the yearly lab retreat. It’s a chance to step back, connect and talk about science in a low-pressure setting, like somewhere in the stunning Scottish Highlands, for example, my new favorite place. I’ll also adopt a practice from my Ph.D. supervisor, who made sure every day that the espresso machine was stocked and the printer loaded. It might seem insignificant, but those small things made our daily work smoother and helped us feel supported and cared for. To lean into the clichés: It’s the little things that make the biggest difference.
Andrew Kesner, incoming assistant professor of psychology, Indiana University Indianapolis
Lab start date: August 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab investigates neural circuits involved in goal-directed behavior through the lens of addiction/substance use disorder, focusing on pathways that aren’t typically thought of as part of the canonical reward system. We also emphasize understanding how sleep and sleep circuits are involved in reward-seeking, given that sleep disruption is commonly associated with psychiatric disorders related to aberrant reward-seeking, such as substance use disorders. Many people report having trouble with sleep during abstinence, so much so that sleep disruption can be a potent driver of relapse. It is really difficult to study this in humans because of chicken-and-egg problems. Were these people bad sleepers before their substance misuse? Or did the chronic drug use drive what is seen during abstinence? Fortunately, we now have the tools and techniques to begin to understand this phenomenon in the pre-clinical setting. I am very excited to figure out how misused substances, such as cannabis and alcohol, alter the brain to drive sleep disturbances during withdrawal.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
This is more related to the job search process, but some great advice I received when considering multiple positions was to put the most emphasis on the “sandbox.” In other words, don’t get too caught up on the salary and startup budget numbers, because the real key to success is who will be around you to support you and collaborate with you.
Samuel Muscinelli, incoming assistant professor of neurobiology, University of Chicago
Lab start date: August 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab aims to understand how the anatomical structure of brain circuits shapes learning and adapts in response to it. As a theorist, I approach this question from multiple perspectives across different brain regions, using a combination of analytical theory, machine learning and data analysis. I’m especially excited about the growing availability of detailed data on neuronal connectivity, which presents an opportunity to use computational modeling to explore how structural features influence brain function.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your own lab?
During my postdoc, we occasionally organized hackathons—full-day sessions where we would independently explore a dataset, either guided by a specific question or entirely open-ended. These sessions were a great way to push ourselves to learn something new, test ideas quickly and get our hands dirty with data. I hope to carry this initiative forward in my lab.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
It might be a common one, but a piece of advice that stuck with me is: Give your trainees a project they can and want to do, not just one you want them to do. It is easy to fall into the trap of projecting our own interests or strengths onto our trainees, but I think it is crucial to find a balance between guiding someone’s growth and giving them the freedom to leverage their unique skills and curiosity.
Sophia Shi, incoming Rowland fellow and principal investigator, Harvard University
Lab start date: September 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying brain aging and neurodegenerative disease, with a focus on glycans—complex sugars that decorate cell surfaces and shape the brain’s extracellular environment. Although glycans play essential roles throughout biology, their functions in the nervous system remain largely unexplored, which makes them incredibly exciting to research. Studying brain glycobiology feels like exploring an entirely new planet, where we’re just beginning to decode its fundamental rules and language. I’m driven by the challenge of unraveling how these molecules influence brain function and using that knowledge to guide new treatments for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will bring over and implement in your own lab?
One practice I valued from a previous lab was the “safety minute” at the start of each lab meeting, where the presenter would briefly highlight a safety procedure relevant to the lab. It created a culture where safety wasn’t an afterthought or something to be considered only in the case of high-risk experiments, but a regular part of our scientific thinking and planning. I plan to carry that forward in my lab: Safety always comes first.
Jean-Paul Noel, assistant professor of neuroscience, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Lab start date: November 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
In my lab, we study how the brain takes in sensory information and infers the state of the environment. Conducting experiments in both rodents and humans, we attempt to “trick” observers into misperceiving the environment, causing perceptual illusions or hallucinations, and then try to understand what neural mechanisms led to these illusions. I am excited to use novel technologies that enable us to record from many thousands of neurons simultaneously, even in freely moving contexts. For me, understanding the brain means being able to bridge levels of description—from single cells to neural populations—to behavior. I am excited to leverage different models for the level of description they afford: complex behaviors in humans and single-cell resolution in rodents.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
To be kind to oneself. There are so many priorities when starting a group. Hiring personnel, filling ethical approvals, getting the lab up and running, writing grants and finishing up papers from prior labs. The list just goes on and on. I don’t think I am particularly good at this yet, but I think it’s important to realize that you simply won’t be able to make progress on all these fronts simultaneously, and that is fine. Step by step.
Jerome Beetz, group leader, University of Wuerzburg
Lab start date: May 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
We study the spatial memory of insects by focusing on honeybees. Aside from humans, honeybees are the only known species that communicate spatial information to conspecifics. To do this, bees dance on vertical combs inside the hive and in complete darkness. Dance duration and direction correlate with the communication of a spatial goal, such as a food source, for example. Hive mates extract distance and directional information that guide them to their goal. Using neural recordings from freely walking, dancing and tethered flying bees, we study how spatial memory is represented in the insect brain.
Are there any traditions or practices (scientific or otherwise) from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
Not necessarily a tradition, but my former principal investigators were always closely associated with the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and supported trainees to take their courses. In 2017, I attended the summer course Neural Systems and Behavior. This course had a substantial impact on my development as a scientist, and I often think back to the summer I spent there. I will strongly recommend any Ph.D. student or postdoc in my lab to enroll in MBL courses.
Thomas Elston, assistant professor of neuroscience, University of Texas at Austin
Lab start date: January 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab leverages decoding and multisite Neuropixels recordings to understand how the frontal lobe regulates the striatum to enable self-control and how it modulates sensory systems to enable feature-based attention. I am particularly excited about our ability to decode cognitive processes in real time. We hope to harness our findings to develop the next generation of brain-computer interfaces, which will improve the lives of people living with disorders of cognitive control, such as addiction, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
What about opening a lab has surprised you so far? What do you wish you had known beforehand?
The most surprising thing has been the fundamental shift from individual achievement to team development. As a postdoctoral fellow, success came through communicating and executing my own ideas, but as a new professor, I find that understanding and nurturing others’ intellectual growth is the key challenge. I wish I had known earlier how to more systematically evaluate and develop potential in lab members, rather than assuming research direction alone would drive success. The transition from being valued for my ideas to being valued for my ability to cultivate others’ thinking requires an entirely different skill set—one I’m still actively developing alongside my scientific questions.
Are there any traditions or practices (scientific or otherwise) from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
We have whiteboards everywhere. It is amazing what this does for communication within the lab both because people are sharing their ideas but also because they are refining their ability to articulate them. We also have a weekly event called Scientific Cinema, where we close out the week by watching a science documentary or movie. It’s something to look forward to each week. People from lots of other labs join, sometimes even other principal investigators, which has added to a growing sense of community in our department.
Tayler Sheahan, assistant professor of cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy, Medical College of Wisconsin
Lab start date: October 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab studies how our nervous system senses and responds to dangers in our environment—in particular, things that are itchy or painful. These are meant to be protective sensations but can go awry and cause unbearable diseases such as chronic itch or chronic pain. We study how these sensations are typically encoded, what changes occur in disease states and how to reverse them. I am especially interested in how neuropeptides—small proteins that neurons use to communicate with one another—shape itch and pain signaling. In the past five years, we’ve seen an explosion of new technologies to study neuropeptides, such as sensors that report when a neuropeptide binds to its receptor. I am excited to use these new methods to ask questions that we could not answer using previous approaches.
What about opening a lab has surprised you so far? What do you wish you had knownbeforehand?
In my experience, opening my lab has felt a lot like the first months of parenthood! No matter how much advice you get about what it will be like, it’s hard to appreciate the challenges until you are in the thick of it. There are highs, and there are lows. I am finding that it’s important to be flexible with goals and timelines.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Several mentors have given me the advice to “be selfish with your time” when first opening a lab. As a new faculty member, there are so many opportunities to get involved in new research directions and collaborations—not to mention institutional service, such as serving on animal study review committees, for example. But it’s important not to spread yourself too thin while trying to get your lab up and running. This advice has helped me learn to say no to potential opportunities that don’t align with my current goals.
Jocelyn Breton, incoming assistant professor of neuroscience, Smith College
Lab start date: July 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
The goal of my lab is to understand how experiencing stress during key developmental periods affects the brain and ultimately alters motivated behaviors. Experiencing early-life stress is unfortunately very common in both the United States and around the world, and we know that such experiences can increase the risk for developing psychiatric disorders later in life. One of the aims of my lab is to explore what’s changing in the brain, especially in reward pathways. Ultimately, I hope my work will inform treatments and interventions for individuals at risk.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Do not aim for perfection in the first few years. It’s important to remember that you’re setting the foundation for what’s to come, and that will take time. Another bit of advice I’ve gotten is to get to know as many people at your new university as possible, including the administrative staff and faculty from other departments. I’ll try to meet at least one new person each week when I start.
Vivian Paulun, incoming assistant professor of psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Lab start date: August 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
My lab’s research program seeks to explain a fundamental human ability—visual intuitive physics, our ability to understand the physics of a scene at a glance. Whenever we open our eyes, we instantly infer the physical properties of objects, the relationships between them, the forces acting on them and what is likely to happen next. This ability is an essential component of intelligent behavior: We cannot take a single step forward without first determining if the surface will support our weight and whether the road ahead is slippery, and we cannot pick up an object without first determining its approximate mass, rigidity and friction. How the brain infers the physical structure of the outside world from the patterns of light entering our eyes remains a major scientific challenge that I want to tackle in my lab.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
I have been fortunate to train in labs with fantastic mentors, and I would not be where I am today without their support. In my own lab, I hope to foster a similarly supportive, uplifting, kind and fun lab culture. When it comes to traditions, I always liked the German custom of having the lab craft a personalized and fun graduation hat—featuring references to the individual’s research, hobbies or personality—for every newly minted Ph.D. I would love to continue this tradition in my lab.
Ezgi Hacisuleyman, assistant professor, Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation and Technology, University of Florida
Lab start date: February 2024
What are your lab’s aims and major research questions?
My lab focuses on uncovering how synapses—specifically those located far from the soma—respond to stimuli. To do that, we investigate activity-dependent synaptic RNA localization, translational control and metabolic regulation. By uncovering how these processes differ across cells, we aim to identify the unique molecular mechanisms that set neurons apart. I am particularly excited to expand on the tools I developed during my postdoc and to create new methodologies to investigate mitochondrial regulation at synapses in response to neuronal activity.
What is the best advice you’ve gotten from colleagues or mentors prior to opening your lab?
Keep your lab small and be on the bench all the time at the beginning. One of my postdoctoral mentors, Robert Darnell, emphasized this approach. It’s not just because your hands will likely be the best in the lab at that point, but also because working directly at the bench is vital for shaping a lab’s culture. It allows you to establish a collaborative and engaged environment while building meaningful interactions with your students and trainees. This has been working very well for me so far.
Aran Nayebi, assistant professor of machine learning, Carnegie Mellon University
Lab start date: September 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
In my lab, we aim to uncover the fundamental principles of intelligence by reverse-engineering the brain’s computations and using those insights to build life-long learning agents. We ask: How do animals transform continuous sensory inputs into meaningful physical actions, and how can we translate that into better artificial intelligence? I’m excited about using neuroscience to push AI beyond static benchmarks—toward real-world, embodied intelligence. The idea that understanding the brain’s algorithms could unlock more autonomous and adaptive robots is what drives me.
What is the best advice you received from a mentor or colleague before opening your lab?
Don’t chase trends—work on the problems that truly excite you. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s hot in AI or neuroscience, but long-term impact comes from following deep, fundamental questions based on first principles, rather than current, short-term hype.
Vlad Ayzenberg, incoming assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, Temple University
Lab start date: July 2025
What are your lab’s research aims?
The goal of my lab is to understand how the human brain is organized at birth to support the rapid development of cognitive and perceptual abilities, and to use this understanding to create more human-like artificial-intelligence agents.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained in that you will implement in your lab?
I’ve always worked in very tight-knit, social labs, and I hope to foster that dynamic in mine. There is already a big-screen TV and a Nintendo Switch in the lab, so I am looking forward to resolving debates over some Mario Kart. On a more technical note, our research requires increasingly more complex coding skills. So I plan to implement intermittent code reviews as a lab.
Marissa Scavuzzo, assistant professor, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Lab start date: August 2024
What are your lab’s aims and major research questions?
My lab is interested in understanding how a cell maintains its functional identity. The gut is a highly fluctuating and complex environment. We know glial cells are highly plastic and glia in the enteric nervous system interact with a multitude of cell types. We aim to understand how enteric glial cells in the gut function and how these functions are maintained amidst this vacillating milieu.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
I like Kara Marshall’s onboarding survey and Leslie Vosshall’s anonymous survey for lab culture feedback, so I modified these to use in my lab. Both Kara and Leslie made these surveys into freely available Google forms that others can use. I am grateful to them both. We have anonymous feedback forms after interviewing personnel or student rotations, as well as QR codes around the lab to send in anonymous feedback on how to make things more inclusive or efficient in the lab. It helps me know what is going on and make sure everyone feels their voice is heard.
Sergio Hidalgo Sotelo, incoming assistant professor of integrative physiology and neuroscience, Washington State University
Lab start date: July 2025
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
Biological rhythms are ubiquitous, which means there is an endless array of potential research questions to explore—each one more interesting than the last. In my lab, we aim to understand the molecular origins of structural and functional differences observed in circadian circuits under different seasonal conditions. I’m particularly excited about this work because I believe it will advance our understanding of seasonal affective disorder and how circadian rhythms affect other illnesses, such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
I trained in three different labs across three countries: with Jorge Campusano in Chile, James Hodge in the United Kingdom and Joanna Chiu in the United States. Each of these labs had unique practices, traditions and cultures. But one common element across all of them was that the principal investigator was always available to provide feedback—whether to celebrate successes or address challenges. They taught me that openness and clearly outlining expectations for your lab members are key parts of being a principal investigator. I plan to incorporate this approach in my lab.
Arielle Keller, assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience, University of Connecticut
Lab start date: August 2024
What do you study? What part of your research are you most excited about?
I’m particularly excited about studying attention. In my lab, we aim to understand how the brain focuses on what’s important amid constant distractions. We use noninvasive neuroimaging tools such as functional MRI and EEG to understand how attention changes in the context of mental illness, and how it develops adaptively throughout childhood and adolescence. I’m excited to use person-specific brain mapping to better understand what makes each of our individual brains unique.
Are there any traditions or practices from the labs you trained at that you will bring over and implement in your lab?
Our lab will use the “reproducibilibuddy” system, developed by Ted Satterthwaite at the University of Pennsylvania. (Satterthwaite wrote about the system and its inspiration last year in an essay for The Transmitter, “How scuba diving helped me embrace open science.”) For each new project conducted in the lab, the lead author will be matched with a reproducibility buddy who will conduct an internal replication of the key results, earning them co-authorship and ensuring that our results are replicable before new manuscripts are submitted for peer review.
Lauren Faget, assistant professor of neurosciences, Boise State University
Lab start date: August 2024
What are your lab’s research aims?
My lab’s research goals are to identify the neural basis of reward and motivated behaviors and to investigate the adaptation and dysregulation of these neural circuits in neuropsychiatric disorders associated with reward function deficits.
What part of your research are you most excited about?
I’m excited about starting my own research on brain pathways driving motivated behaviors, as this research could uncover new treatments for conditions such as addiction and depression.
I am actively hiring a full-time technician and looking for students interested in pursuing an M.S. or Ph.D. Interested candidates can reach out to me at [email protected].