Faculty directors

Tallie Z Baram, MD, PhD

Program Co-Director

Robert Hunt, PhD

Program Co-Director

Training faculty in the T32 TPER

Below is a list of participating faculty preceptors in the TPER program, with brief summaries of their research interests and links to their lab webpage or faculty profile.

Geoffrey Abbott, PhD

Ion channels, bioelectricity, drug discovery, herbal medicines

Tallie Z Baram, MD, PhD

Brain development and maturation, febrile seizures, early-life experiences, stress

Lulu Y Chen, PhD

Synaptic plasticity, autism, behavioral comorbidities

Laura Ewell, PhD

Temporal lobe epilepsy, memory, place cells, dentate gyrus, hippocampus

Christine Gall, PhD

Adult synaptic plasticity, memory encoding, synaptic modulators, intellectual disability, autism, sexual dimorphism, endocannabinoids

Peyman Golshani, MD, PhD

Network dynamics in autism, epilepsy, calcium imaging, neurotechnologies

Robert Hunt, PhD

Genetic disorders, post-traumatic epilepsy, interneurons, cell and gene therapy

Autumn Ivy, MD, PhD

Early-life exercise, epigenetics, learning and memory, developmental disorders

Gary Lynch, PhD

Synaptic plasticity, LTP, learning, episodic memory, network activity, sex differences, endocannabinoids, glutamate receptors, integrins, cognitive impairment; brain aging

Daniele Piomelli, PhD

Cellular pharmacology, neuropharmacology

Viji Santhakumar, PhD

Synaptic circuit mechanisms of epilepsy and traumatic brain injury

Os Steward, PhD

Spinal cord injury, regeneration, epilepsy, excitotoxicity, neurodegenerative diseases, synapse growth and plasticity, mRNA localization, dendritic transport

Momoko Watanabe, PhD

Brain organoids, neurodevelopment, autism, epilepsy

John Weiss, MD, PhD

Neurodegeneration, cell death, excitotoxicity, epilepsy, glutamate, calcium, zinc, Alzheimer’s, ALS, basal forebrain, motor neurons, free radicals, trophic factors, LTP, synaptic plasticity

Marcelo Wood, PhD

Epigenetic mechanisms of memory, addiction and synaptic plasticity

Xiangmin Xu, PhD

Epigenetics, memory, vision, epilepsy, circuit mapping, tool and technology development

Michael Yassa, PhD

Neuroimaging of memory in epilepsy

External advisors

Karen Wilcox, PhD

Distinguished Professor and Chair, Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Utah

Jaideep Kapur, MD

Eugene Meyer III Professor of Neuroscience, Neurology & Director of UVA Brain Institute, University of Virginia

Program administration

Administrative support is provide through the UCI Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology.