In: News
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Ernie Hwaun has been awarded with the 2021 Interdisciplinary Scholar Award from the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. The promising young postdoctoral researchers of this Interdisciplinary Scholar Award come from the schools of Medicine, Engineering, Education and Humanities & Sciences, and stand out for their drive to challenge themselves and the traditional boundaries of their field. The postdoctoral Interdisciplinary Scholar Awards include a two-year fellowship, career development and funds for experiments or travel. The newest scholars join thirty previous fellowship recipients including alumni who have made important advances in the neurosciences and gone on to careers in academia, industry, nonprofit and government organizations.
Ernie Hwaun is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Soltesz Lab. Ernie received his Bachelor of Science in Physiology & Neuroscience and Master of Science in Biology from the University of California, San Diego. He then moved to the University of Texas at Austin to pursue PhD in Neuroscience. In his doctoral studies, Ernie investigated how rodents acquire memory of new locations during awake behaviors and subsequent sleep. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Soltesz lab at Stanford, he has been investigating the distinct roles of key inhibitory cell types in normal and abnormal circuit functions in mice. To explore whether neural mechanisms that support spatial memory in mammals also exist in invertebrates, Ernie has turned to octopuses, which possess the most advanced nervous system among invertebrates, with the ability to learn and navigate in open water. In collaboration with Prof. Zhenan Bao’s laboratory in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Ernie plans to employ new soft-material probes suitable to collect neural signals from behaving octopuses. With these new tools, he aims to gain insights into common fundamental neuronal mechanisms underlying spatial navigation in evolutionarily distant species living in markedly different natural environments.
February 1, 2021
Alternating sources of perisomatic inhibition during behavior
October 5, 2020
Deep brain optogenetics without intracranial surgery
September 29, 2020
URee – Welcome to Soltesz Lab!
URee Chon has graduated with a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Pennsylvania State University. As a first year rotating Neuroscience graduate student at Stanford, she is mentored by Dr. Nguyen in the Soltesz lab.
September 21, 2020
Shreya – Welcome to Soltesz Lab!
Shreya Malhotra is a first-year medical student at Stanford. In the lab, she will be studying the role of hippocampal circuitry in epilepsy. She will be working closely with Dr. Dudok.
September 14, 2020
Jesslyn – Welcome to Soltesz Lab!
Jesslyn Homidan is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where she received her B.A. in Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology. At Berkeley, she worked as an undergraduate apprentice in Dr. Na Ji’s Lab conducting biophysics research on the thalamus and visual cortex. Jesslyn is excited about her new role as a Research Assistant in our lab.