July 2023: Dr. Skirmantas Janusonis presented at the meeting of the NSF CRCNS (Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience) program in Tel Aviv (Israel): The Stochastic Self-Organization of Serotonergic Densities. Recording
April 2023: Dr. Skirmantas Janusonis presented at the meeting of the International Society for Serotonin Research in Cancun (Mexico): Experimental and Theoretical Insights into the Self-organization of the Brain Serotonergic Matrix.
December 2022: Justin Haiman has been awarded an UCSB CoVo (Community Volunteer Foundation) grant.
December 2022: Geneva Dunn has been awarded an UCSB URCA (Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities) grant.
November 2022: Kasie Mays has defended her Ph.D. thesis. CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Mays!
November 2022: Melissa Hingorani has defended her Ph.D. thesis. CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Hingorani!
July 2022: Melissa Hingorani presented a poster (Single-Axon Dynamics of Serotonergic Neurons in Ex Vivo Systems) at the 2022 Forum of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies in Paris (FENS 2022).
May 2022: Kasie Mays has received the 2022 Harry J. Carlisle Memorial Award for Neuroscience and Behavior. This award recognizes an advanced graduate student in the Neuroscience & Behavior area for their sound scholarship, strong research record, and contributions to the graduate program.
May 2022: Kasie Mays has received the Abdullah (Al) and Marjorie R. Nasser Graduate Student Memorial Scholarship. This award is given to senior graduate students for a strong scholarly record and contributions to the department and the broader UCSB community.
November 2021: Dr. Janusonis gave a keynote lecture at the 13th International Conference of the Lithuanian Neuroscience Association (The Embedded Consciousness: The Self-organization of the Serotonergic Matrix).
September 2021: The laboratory has been awarded a three-year grant by the National Science Foundation (Stochastic Axons Systems: From Spatial Dynamics to Self-Organization).
2020-2021
May 2021: Marissa Millwater has received a two-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA).
May 2021: Kasie Mays has been awarded a UCSB Central Graduate Fellowship.
May 2021: Justin Haiman has received the Morgan Award for Research Promise in Psychological and Brain Sciences. This award is given to a graduating student at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences who demonstrates the most promise in the area of experimental research, as selected by the faculty.
2019-2020
August 2020: The UCSB Microscopy Facility has been awarded an NIH grant for a super-resolution microscopy system (with Dr. Janusonis as a co-Principal Investigator).
May 2020: An image by Melissa Hingorani has won the UCSB Art of Science 2020 People's Choice Award.
February 2020: Jenna Sanfilippo has received a two-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA).
December 2019: Justin Haiman, Jenna Sanfilippo, and Adele Viviani have been awarded UCSB Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities grants.
October 2019: The laboratory presented two posters at the 2019 Society for Neuroscience meeting: Serotonergic Fibers as Random Walks - A Spatial Analysis (K.C. Mays, K.L. Thomas, J.H. Haiman, S. Janusonis) and Ex-vivo Dynamics of Serotonergic Fibers (M.T. Hingorani, A.M. Viviani, J.E. Sanfilippo, S.N. Siu, J.C. Chiu, J.L. Self, C.M. Bates, S. Janusonis).
April 2019: Our stochastic model of serotonergic fibers has been selected for the cover of a special issue of Biochimie.
March 2019: Our interdisciplinary team has been awarded NSF supplemental funding for supercomputing. We are among the first national teams to be granted access to Frontera, a next-generation NSF supercomputer.
December 2018: The laboratory hosted Dr. Georg Striedter, the Editor-in-Chief of Brain, Behavior and Evolution and a coauthor of Brains through Time, a new book on the evolution of nervous systems.
Kevin Sit (another group), Cezar Borba (another group), Dr. Georg Striedter, Kasie Mays, Kirra Thomas, and Carson Louie
November 2018: The laboratory presented at the 2018 Society for Neuroscience meeting: The Deep Structure of the Brain Serotonergic Matrix.
August 2018: The laboratory has been awarded a CRCNS grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
2017-2018
June 2018: The laboratory has been awarded an R21 grant by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
May 2018: Riley Demos has received the Morgan Award for Academic Excellence in Psychological and Brain Sciences. This award is given to a graduating student at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in recognition of outstanding scholarship, as selected by the faculty.
May 2018: Riley Demos presented her research at the 2018 Undergraduate Research Colloquium: Serotonin-releasing Fibers May Perform Random Walks in the Brain.
May 2018: Keon Youssefzadeh and Norma Brown presented their research at the 2018 Undergraduate Research Colloquium: Transmigration at the Circumventricular Organs and the Microglia-Serotonin Matrix.
December 2017: The laboratory has been awarded a Challenge - New Partnerships Grant by the California NanoSystems Institute (Brain Serotonergic Fibers: From a Single-cell Stochastic Process to Cognition in a Matrix).
December 2017: Riley Demos has been awarded an URCA grant.
December 2017: Norma Brown and Keon Youssefzadeh have been awarded an URCA grant.
2016-2017
June 2017: Elizabeth Sopira, Kayla Riparetti, and Savannah Starr have received Distinction in the Major (Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology).
May 2017: Marcus Vicari has received the Morgan Award for Academic Excellence in Psychological and Brain Sciences. This award is given to a graduating student at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in recognition of outstanding scholarship, as selected by the faculty.
May 2017: Marcus Vicari has received the 2016-2017 College of Letters and Science Frances Colville and Terry Dearborn Memorial Award. The award recognizes outstanding scholarship and contributions to the campus community by a graduating senior with a major in the Division of Mathematics, Life & Physical Sciences.
May 2017: Samuel Phillips and Nicki Nikkhoy presented their research at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Colloquium: Brain Regional Dependence on Blood Platelets.
May 2017: Keon Youssefzadeh and Norma Brown presented their research at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Colloquium: The Microglia-Serotonin Matrix and Blood Platelets.
April 2017: Melissa Hingorani (a Ph.D. student) has joined the laboratory.
February 2017: Kasie Mays (a Ph.D. student) has joined the laboratory.
December 2016: Norma Brown and Keon Youssefzadeh have been awarded an URCA grant.
December 2016: Nicki Nikkhoy and Samuel Phillips have been awarded an URCA grant.
November 2016: Dr. Skirmantas Janusonis's book review in Visual Neuroscience is cited by the MIT Press 2017 catalog. The full review is available here.
November 2016: Savannah Starr, Marcus Vicari, Kayla Riparetti, and Scott Lunell presented a poster (The Brain Serotonin Matrix: Platelet and Microglial Elements) at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, California.
November 2016: One focus of our research has been featured in The Bottom Line.
September 2016: Dr. Skirmantas Janusonis commented on new research findings for VICE.
2015-2016
June 2016: Keon Youssefzadeh, Nicki Nikkhoy, and Norma Brown have joined the laboratory.
May 2016: We organized and hosted the first Neuropathology Night for UCSB pre-med students. The discussions were led by Dr. Stewart Comer, a neuropathologist at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Presenting students: Gold Okafor, Scott Lunell, Courtney Uselton, Brian James, Kyle Cartier, Marcus Vicari, Alexander Smolentsev, Emily Lara, Megan Wong, Gabriella Torres, Mali Suzuki, Elizabeth Sarkis, Urvashi Singh, George Hernandez, Anne Brow, and Kiana Lee. More...
May 2016: Kayla Riparetti and Elizabeth Sopira's Undergraduate Research Colloquium poster has been awarded an Honorable Mention by the UCSB Emeriti Association.
May 2016: Kayla Riparetti and Elizabeth Sopira presented their research at the 2016 Undergraduate Research Colloquium: Blood Serotonin in Brain Signaling.
May 2016: Marcus Vicari and Savannah Starr presented their research at the 2016 Undergraduate Research Colloquium: Microglial Control of the Brain Serotonin System.
March 2016: Skirmantas Janusonis presented our research at the UCSB-Cottage Hospital Research Symposium.
December 2015: Kayla Riparetti and Elizabeth Sopira have been awarded an URCA grant.
December 2015: Marcus Vicari and Savannah Starr have been awarded an URCA grant.
