Liftoff: New lab alerts

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].