People

Meaghan Creed, PhD
Assistant Professor
Principal Investigator

meaghan.creed@wustl.edu

Meaghan Creed is from a very small town on Lake St. Clair in Ontario Canada. She obtained her HBSc and PhD at the University of Toronto in Canada, then moved to Geneva Switzerland for post-doctoral training. Throughout her career, she has focused on understanding and optimizing deep brain stimulation (DBS) applied to the basal ganglia for neurological and psychiatric disorders. Now an an assistant professor at the WashU Pain center, she and her team are working to develop new neuromodulation therapies to treat symptoms at the interface of chronic pain, addiction and mood disorders.

When not in lab, Meaghan runs, travels and spends time getting to know St. Louis.

Photo Credit: S. Quernheim

Chris Stander - Lab Manager

Born and raised in the Greater Cincinnati area, Chris Stander has been in St. Louis since 2001. With a bachelor’s degree in biology from University of Dayton, and a master’s degree in zoology from Indiana University, she has chosen to focus her energies on lab management, while maintaining an interest in cell biology. Chris joined the Creed lab in December 2018. When not tending to the needs of the lab, Chris spends time with her dogs and volunteers at a local animal shelter.

Jessica Tooley - Research Technician

Jessica Tooley is from southern Wisconsin and attended St. Norbert College. She graduated with a BA in Psychology before joining the Creed Lab in June 2017. Jessica has been performing behavioral assays with in vivo electrophysiology recordings and optogenetic manipulations.

Jess will be starting her PhD in neuroscience in the Washington University Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences starting August 2019!

Elizabeth Godynyuk - Visiting Master's Student

Elizabeth was born in Hartford, CT, and moved to Europe at a young age. She obtained her B.Sc in Liberal Arts and Sciences at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. She is now working on her M.Sc in Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam. During her Masters internship, in the lab of Ingo Willuhn, she used viral neuronal tracing to understand how dopamine signalling projects between the striatum and the midbrain.

Since joining the Creed lab in January 2019, she has used fiber photometry and neuronal tracing to investigate the role of non-canonical ventral pallidal neurons in reward-related behavior.

Update: After completing her masters, Lizzy will be returning to the Creed Lab as a research associate/technician!

Yvan Vachez - Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Yvan Vachez is from Grenoble, France, where he graduated with a license in biology, a master degree in Neurosciences and Neurobiology. Yvan obtained his PhD from the Grenoble Institute for Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Sabrina Boulet and Dr. Sebastian Carnicella in 2018. In his thesis work, he studied the involvement of the dopamine system in the neuropsychiatric side effects of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson’s disease.

In the Creed lab, Yvan is using electrophysiology, optogenetic manipulations and behavioural assays to optimize deep brain stimulation protocols for affective and addictive disorders. When he’s not in the lab, Yvan loves watching movies and playing tennis.

Lex Kravitz - Scientific Collaborator