Fellows

KLINGENSTEIN FELLOWSHIP AWARDS IN NEUROSCIENCE

The Klingenstein Fellowship Awards in Neuroscience supports early career investigators engaged in basic or clinical research that may lead to a better understanding of neurological and psychiatric disorders. The fellowship awards promote high-risk, and potentially high-reward, projects. Aimed at advancing cutting-edge investigations, the awards are presented to highly promising, early career scientists. At this critical juncture in their careers, funding can be a challenge.

2025 Fellows

Salil Bidaye, Ph.D.

Neural Circuit Mechanisms for Regulating Postural Stability

Institution

  • Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience

Lab Website

Sebastian Choi, Ph.D.

Unraveling the Cancer-Neuron Crosstalk: Pathological Interactions Between Cancer and Pain Circuits

Institution

  • UT Southwestern Medical Center

Lab Website

Carolyn Elya, Ph.D.

Leveraging Nature’s “Zombies” to Unearth Principles of Animal Nervous Systems

Institution

  • Harvard University

Lab Website

Tristan Geiller, Ph.D.

Contextual Computations in the Subiculum: From Circuits to Disorders

Institution

  • Yale University

Lab Website

Xin Gu, Ph.D.

Elucidating the Role of the Midnolin-Proteasome Pathway in the Central Nervous System

Institution

  • Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Lab Website

Laura Gwilliams, Ph.D.

The Dynamic Neural Code of Speech Comprehension

Institution

  • Stanford University

Lab Website

Danique Jeurissen, Ph.D.

Recovering Cognition After Cortical Damage

Institution

  • New York University

Lab Website

Aaron Kuan, Ph.D.

Multiscale Functional Connectomics: A New Paradigm for Mapping the Brain

Institution

  • Yale University

Lab Website

Changyang Linghu, Ph.D.

Decoding Memory Codes by Large-Scale Prediction of Immediate Early Gene Expression

Institution

  • University of Michigan

Lab Website

Quynh Anh Nguyen, Ph.D.

Inhibitory Control of Hyperexcitability

Institution

  • Vanderbilt University

Lab Website

Justin O'Hare, Ph.D.

Investigating Intracellular Ca2+ Release in Dendrites in Vivo

Institution

  • University of Colorado

Lab Website

Debosmita Sardar, Ph.D.

Glial Epigenetic Encoding of Odor Sensory Information

Institution

  • University of Colorado

Lab Website

Carl Schoonover, Ph.D.

Neurobiology of Unreinforced Learning

Institution

  • Allen Institute

Lab Website

2024 Fellows

Vineet Augustine, Ph.D.

Brainwide networks for internal state mediated behavior

Institution

  • University of California, San Diego

Lab Website

Jeeyun Chung, Ph.D.

Cellular and molecular basis of lipid metabolism in the brain

Institution

  • Harvard University

Lab Website

Linlin Fan, Ph.D.

All-optical interrogation of endocannabinoid-mediated inhibitory synaptic plasticity during learning

Institution

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lab Website

Jordan Farrell, Ph.D.

Hijacking synchronous brain states in hyperexcitability

Institution

  • Boston Childrens Hospital

Lab Website

Anna K. Gillespie, Ph.D.

Leveraging individual variability to identify and promote neural signatures of good memory

Institution

  • University of Washington

Lab Website

Vijay Mohan K Namboodiri, Ph.D.

Neural circuit mechanisms underlying retrospective learning

Institution

  • University of California, San Francisco

Lab Website

Eirene Markenscoff-Papadimitriou, Ph.D.

Epigenetic mechanisms controlling neuronal excitability

Institution

  • Cornell University

Lab Website

Anders Nelson, Ph.D.

Discovering Spinal Feedback Circuits for Skilled Behavior

Institution

  • New York University

Lab Website

Jessica Osterhout, Ph.D.

Why does sickness hurt?

Institution

  • University of Utah

Lab Website

Neşet Özel, Ph.D.

Developmental reprogramming of innate behavior

Institution

  • Stowers Institute for Medical Research

Lab Website

Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Ph.D.

Neural dynamics of social competence

Institution

  • University of Florida

Lab Website

Kartik Pattabiraman, M.D., Ph.D.

Unraveling genomic mechanisms of human brain connectivity using in vivo epigenetic editing

Institution

  • Yale University

Lab Website

Elizabeth Pollina, Ph.D.

Activity-Dependent Genome Integrity in Neuronal Plasticity and Disease

Institution

  • Washington University in St. Louis

Lab Website

Kapil V. Ramachandran, Ph.D.

Establishing a new principle of neuromodulation through plasma-membrane bound neuroproteasomes

Institution

  • Columbia University

Lab Website

Param Priya Singh, Ph.D.

Neuroprotective mechanisms of killifish diapause

Institution

  • University of California, San Francisco

Lab Website

Herbert Zheng Wu, Ph.D.

Neural Basis of Leader-Follower Dynamics in Cooperative Behavior

Institution

  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Lab Website

2023 Fellows

Sarah Ackerman, Ph.D.

Glial modulation of developmental and pathological circuit plasticity

Institution

  • Washington University in St. Louis

Lab Website

Arkarup Banerjee, Ph.D.

Cortical Circuit Mechanisms for Vocal Interactions

Institution

  • Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Lab Website

Ritchie Chen, Ph.D.

Understanding emotions by studying brain-body pathways

Institution

  • University of California, San Francisco

Lab Website

SueYeon Chung, Ph.D.

Probing brain functions from neural populations via geometric analysis and machine learning

Institution

  • New York University

Lab Website

Yasmine El-Shamayleh, Ph.D.

Cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying visual shape perception

Institution

  • Columbia University

Lab Website

Vikram Gadagkar, Ph.D.

Courtship as a Window into the Neural Mechanisms of Performance Evaluation

Institution

  • Columbia University

Lab Website

Fenna Krienen, Ph.D.

Reconstructing the developmental basis of cellular innovations in primate brains

Institution

  • Princeton University

Lab Website

Huaijin Ken Leon Loh, Ph.D.

Peripheral Synapses: Illuminating molecules connecting nerves with organs

Institution

  • Yale University

Lab Website

Brittany D. Needham, Ph.D.

The mechanism of the neuroactive gut-derived bacterial metabolite 4EPS

Institution

  • Indiana University School of Medicine

Lab Website

Lu Sun, Ph.D.

What do axons do in myelination?

Institution

  • UT Southwestern Medical Center

Lab Website

Emily Sylwestrak, Ph.D.

Cell type specific reward computations across multiple timescales

Institution

  • University of Oregon

Lab Website

Brandon Weissbourd, Ph.D.

Mechanisms of robustness in jellyfish neural networks

Institution

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lab Website

Kevin Yackle, M.D., Ph.D.

The Source of Breathing and How it is Volitionally Usurped and Coordinated with Phonation

Institution

  • University of California, San Francisco

Lab Website