Travel Fellowships (Continued)

National Institute of Health Travel Fellowships

Five travel fellowships are supported by National Institutes of Health Conference Grant R13NS132531, jointly funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to support travel for early career trainees from diverse backgrounds.

Karim Abdelaal

Karim is a PhD student at Duke University. He uses multisite in vivo electrophysiology and machine learning techniques to discover brain wide network organization related to opioid withdrawals, compulsive opioid seeking, and how environmental familiarity may exacerbate these phenotypes. Karim is committed to providing equitable scientific opportunities for young, underrepresented members of the community and has led efforts to develop an 8-week summer neuroscience internship program for high school students.

Poster details: Wednesday, April 26, 2023, 1:00PM | Poster board 1.3.76 Leveraging machine learning to elucidate an opioid withdrawal network

Tia Donaldson

Tia is a PhD student at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Her research is focused on the relationship between alcohol exposure and hippocampal function in spatial navigation. Tia is committed to advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion in science, and has been actively working to address systemic racism within academia to make graduate school a more welcoming and supportive environment for everyone.

Symposium details: Saturday, April 29, 2023, 8:00AM | Symposium 4.1.3

Neurobiological basis of reference coordination for spatial learning and memory

Fernanda Morales-Calva

Fernanda is a PhD student at Rice University. Her research examines the impact of image memorability and emotional valence on memory discrimination performance at varying delays, with implications for educational and cognitive testing settings. Fernanda is deeply committed to diversity and inclusion and her work aims to promote health equity by recruiting participants from diverse backgrounds to make results more applicable to minoritized populations.

Lightning Talk details: Thursday, April 27, 2023, 10:00AM | Talk 2.3.4.4

The impact of image memorability on mnemonic discrimination

Nicholas Ruiz

Nicholas is a PhD student at Temple University. His research explores how agency over a situation can affect associative memory for items related to a choice. Nicholas mentors and supports students from minoritized backgrounds as part of the R25 ENDURE program at Temple and is working to establish a support network for parents pursuing advanced degrees.

Symposium details: Saturday, April 29, 2023, 2:30PM | Symposium 4.4.2 Learning how to choose biases what the brain chooses to remember: behavioral, computational, and neural evidence from humans

Stephanie Grella

Stephanie is an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago. Her lab is interested in the neuromodulatory inputs that govern memory updating and how dysregulation of these circuits contributes to maladaptive cognition and behavior. Stephanie helps underprivileged students attain computing skills needed in an ever-growing digital world and recently started the Loyola Women in Neuroscience Association / Diversity in STEM lunch series to promote diverse genders and empower minoritized scholars.

Symposium details: Thursday, April 27, 2023, 2:30PM | Symposium 2.5.1 Resetting memories when it matters most: The critical role of the locus coeruleus in memory encoding and updating