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Course Directors

Stanford University

Lauren O'Connell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She studies amphibians to learn how animals adapt their behavior and physiology to changing environments. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and then started her own lab at Harvard University as a Bauer Fellow before joining the Stanford faculty in 2017. Projects in the lab include investigating parent-offspring interactions and the physiology of chemical defenses in poison frogs.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Alberto Pereda is a Professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His laboratory is interested in the properties and dynamics of gap junction-mediated electrical transmission in the vertebrate brain. The approach involves investigating electrical transmission at identifiable auditory mixed (electrical and chemical) synapses on the fish Mauthner cells, as well mammalian brain structures. While the study of plasticity of chemical synapses has long been an area of primary interest to neuroscientists, less is known about the modifiability of electrical synapses. Alberto’s laboratory investigates mechanisms underlying changes in synaptic strength at electrical synapses, which ultimately requires determining their full molecular and structural complexity. Alberto has served as faculty in the Neurobiology course from 1996-2000 and 2004-2007, and directed the Grass Laboratory in 2012-2014. He began co-directing NS&B in 2020.