Biography:

Megan Brickner is a third year Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience here at UMN. Before the GPN, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a graduate student, Megan is co-advised by Dr. Benjamin Saunders and Dr. Mark Thomas. Her research interests include investigating and modulating the neural circuitry underlying addiction as a way to disrupt drug seeking behaviors.

Biography:

Stephanie Groman, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and a member of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction. She received her Ph.D. in 2013 from the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles where she trained under Dr. J. David Jentsch and Dr. Edythe London and completed her post-doc at Yale University under Dr. Jane Taylor. Her work is focused on understanding why some individuals are more susceptible to developing addiction compared to others. Her lab integrates measures of decision making and reinforcement learning with neuroimaging, pharmacology, proteomics, and genomic analyses across different developmental stages in animals with the goal of identifying biomarkers of addiction risk and new targets for treating addiction.

Biography:

Anna Ingebretson, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral associate in the lab of Julia Lemos. Her research focuses on characterizing cholinergic interneuron function in the nucleus accumbens and examining how the stress-associated peptide corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) regulates the activity of these neurons. She is additionally invested in examining sex as a biological variable throughout her work.

Biography:

Pending

Biography:

Mark Thomas, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and the Director of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction, a new research program funded by the state legislature to fuel cross-disciplinary collaborations and discover new treatment options. He is also the Director for the Center for Neural Circuits in Addiction. His research examines how addictive drugs alter the brain and how these changes can lead to compulsive drug use. His lab is now focusing on ways to disrupt addiction relapse. He conducts optogenetics techniques in the field of addiction as a neuromodulation researcher for MnDRIVE Brain Conditions.

Biography:

Ben Saunders, Ph.D., received his B.S. from West Virginia University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he worked in the lab of Terry Robinson. He then did postdoctoral research in Patricia Janak's lab, first at the University of California, San Francisco, and then at Johns Hopkins University. In 2018, he joined the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and is a member of the UMN Center for Addiction Neuroscience and the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction. His research explores how drug-associated cues in the environment engage the brain to trigger drug use and relapse, with the goal of identifying biological pathways that can be targeted to prevent these behaviors.

Biography:

Amelia Schneider is a recent master's student graduate from the Graduate Program in Neuroscience (GPN). With a new job at a biotech company, she is excited to pursue a career in industry. In her free time, she likes to spend time with friends, family, and her cute cat, Sneakers. Enjoy the MnSAN conference!