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Meaghan Creed, PhD
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Chris Stander - Lab Manager
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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.
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Kavitha Abiraman - Postdoctoral Fellow
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Dr. Kavitha Abiraman is from southern India and got her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She joined the Creed Lab as a postdoc in December 2019, with the intention of combining her slice physiology training with in vivo electrophysiology during behaviour.
To that end, she studies how non-canonical ventral pallidum projections mediate reward seeking in physiological and maladaptive states. |
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Caitlin Murphy - Postdoctoral Fellow
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Caitlin grew up in rural southwest Wisconsin and received her BS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She joined the Creed Lab as a postdoc in September 2020.
Caitlin is interested in the neural substrates of phenomena central to anesthesia and analgesia – e.g., consciousness, pain, or addiction. Her doctoral work focused on identifying potential cellular- and/or circuit-level mechanisms by which volatile anesthetics or acute inflammation disrupt integration of information to effect pharmacologically or pathologically altered states of consciousness. In the Creed Lab, Caitlin is leveraging her experience as a seasoned electrophysiologist to understand how synaptic changes observed at the intersection of pain and reward pathways contribute to the nociceptive and affective symptoms of chronic pain. When she's not in the lab, Caitlin is at home avoiding the global pandemic enjoys making art, solving colorful math problems by Catriona Agg, playing ultimate frisbee, and finding new hobbies she can adopt with exuberant mediocrity |
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Yvan Vachez - Postdoctoral Fellow
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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. |
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Yu-Hsuan Chang - PhD Student
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Yu-Hsuan (Sharon) Chang is from Taipei, Taiwan and earned her Master's degree in systems neuroscience from National Tsing Hua University. She joined the Creed lab in March 2020. Sharon came to the lab with a background in behavioral neuroscience and has quickly become an expert at programming and designing specialized behavioral equipment to test novel hypotheses.
Her project investigates synaptic adaptations within the mesolimbic dopamine system induced by chronic pain, and the relevance of these adaptations in drug addiction. |
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Jessica Tooley - PhD Student
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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 as a research technician. Jess has been performing behavioral assays with in vivo electrophysiology recordings and optogenetic manipulations.
Jess is now continuing in the lab as a neuroscience PhD student in the Washington University Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences. She is rapidly learning patch clamp electrophysiology, and is using her skillset to determine how synaptic adaptations in the ventral pallidum mediate compulsive drug seeking in the context of addiction. |
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Quinlan McGrath - Research Technician
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Quinlan is an udergraduate student in the biomedical engineering program at Washington University and will be joining the Creed lab in the summer of 2021. Quinlan has experience with Fusion 360, java, and c++. And also enjoys and has experience working with 3D printers and constructing phantom physiological organ systems.
She has previously interned at a startup that focuses on targeted drug delivery and this has furthered her skills and interest in medical devices and deep brain stimulation. Quinlan will be working on optimizing wireless devices for deep brain stimulation and targeted drug delivery in animal models of comorbid chronic pain and opioid withdrawal. |
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Lex Kravitz - Scientific Collaborator
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Dr. Lex Kravitz is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Washington University. His lab focuses on understanding basal ganglia function in health and disease, with a focus on the neural substrates of co-morbid eating and psychiatric disorders. He is also an active advocate for open source neuroscience.
He is a frequent collaborator with the Creed Lab, sharing some common lab space, technicians and lab manager. Learn more about our colleagues in the Kravitz lab at www.kravitzlab.org |
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Lab Alumni
Tom Earnest - Research Technician
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Tom Earnest was born in Baltimore but grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. He studied biology and neuroscience in his BA at Grinnell College, and then received his MSc in Psychiatric Research from King’s College in London. He joined the Creed/Kravitz Lab after completing a post baccalaureate internship in Dr. Mark Hoon’s lab at the NIH, where he studied somatosensation. In his current position, Tom looks to learn how to apply electrophysiology, optogenetics, and other in vivo techniques to study cognition in healthy and disease states.
In his free time, Tom enjoys producing and listening to music, playing video games, and trying new foods around St. Louis. Tom will be starting his PhD in data science at WashU starting Fall 2020! |
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