Principal Investigator

Melissa R. Warden, Ph.D.

 

Associate Professor (tenured)

Department of Translational Neurosciences

College of Medicine - Phoenix

The University of Arizona

 

Melissa R. Warden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Translational Neuroscience at the University of Arizona. She received an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Systems Neuroscience from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she investigated prefrontal neuronal encoding of multi-item short-term memory with Earl K. Miller. As a postdoctoral fellow with Karl Deisseroth at Stanford University she studied cortical control of neuromodulatory systems in motivated behavior. Prior to moving to the University of Arizona, she was faculty in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. She has received a number of awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Robertson Neuroscience Investigator Award from the New York Stem Cell Foundation, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Research Foundation, and a Research Grant from the Whitehall Foundation. Her research at the University of Arizona integrates imaging, neurophysiological, optogenetic, and behavioral approaches to study the neural circuits regulating cognition and emotion and their dysfunction.

 

Melissa's CV

 

Papers: Google Scholar | PubMed | bioRxiv

 

Email: mrwarden [at] arizona.edu

 

Twitter: @MelissaRWarden   Bluesky: @mrwarden.bsky.social

Research Scientists

Gokul Krishna, Ph.D.

Research Scientist

 

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles

Ph.D., Biochemistry, University of Mysore, India

B.S., Pharmacology, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, India

 

 

Postdoctoral Fellows

Pamela Miranda, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow

 

Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Ph.D., Neuroscience, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

B.S., Biological Sciences, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

 

 

 

Graduate Students

Eric Ricci, B.S., M.A.

Graduate Student, Neuroscience Graduate Interdisciplinary Program

 

M.A., Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon

B.S., Cognitive Neuroscience, Carnegie Mellon

 

Laboratory Staff

Erum Mian, M.B., B.S.

Research Professional

 

M.B.,B.S., Dow Medical College, Karachi, Pakistan

 

 

Lab Alumni and next position

Akash Guru → Postdoc with Feng Zhang, MIT/Broad Institute

Brie Sleezer → Medical Writer and Data Analysis Consultant

Caitlin Miller (co-advisee, Michael Sheehan lab) → Postdoc with Lisa Stowers, Scripps Research

Caleb Vogt (co-advisee, Michael Sheehan lab) → Postdoc with Zoe Donaldson, University of Colorado Boulder

Changwoo Seo → Postdoc with Catherine Dulac, Harvard University

Dave Bulkin → Senior Software Engineer, Mathworks

Eileen Troconis → Completing DVM component of DVM/PhD, Cornell University

Kristine Kolkman → Research Associate with Chris Schaffer/Nozomi Nishimura, Cornell University

Ryan Post → Postdoc with Nick Betley, University of Pennsylvania

Wenchao Gu → Research Associate with Shaoyi Jiang, Cornell University

Yi-Yun Ho → Postdoc with Michael Halassa, MIT

Yuval Baumel → Machine Learning Researcher, Intuition Robotics

 

Melissa R. Warden, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Translational Neurosciences

College of Medicine - Phoenix

The University of Arizona

mrwarden [at] arizona.edu