2023
JULY | Congratulations to David Marcus on receiving an outstanding score on his A0 K99-R00 Pathway to Independence Award from NIDA titled "Endocannabinoid modulation of behavioral engagement via an aPVT-NAc circuit Outstanding effort David! Thanks to the entire laboratory, all the efforts from Nephi Stella, Sean Piantadosi, Anthony English, and many other collaborating with David on his project. The group's insights and input over the course of developing the proposal were critical!
JULY | Congratulations to Kasey Girven on receiving an outstanding (very fundable) score on her A0 K99-R00 Pathway to Independence Award from NIDA titled "Decoding Neuropeptide S Modulation of OFC-mediated Reward Seeking". Amazing work Kasey!!! Thanks to the entire laboratory, all the efforts from Charles Zhou on the 2p training, and everyone's insights and input over the course of developing the proposal! Exciting news for Kasey's career!
JUNE | Congratulations to Catalina Zamorano on the receipt of a Notice of Award (NOA) for her F31 NRSA titled "Isolating the role of endogenous mu-opioid activity in the VTA during natural reward", from the National Institute on Drug Abuse!!!! Thank-you to everyone in the lab that provided feedback, experimental help, coding help, and ideas for her project! Super exciting news!
JUNE | Congratulations to Raaj Gowrishankar who received a Notice of Award for his K99/R00 from NIDA titled "Elucidating the Role of Dynorphin in Reward Seeking". This was a very long journey for Raaj, but his persistence paid off handsomely with a perfectly scored grant! A very rare achievement. Thank-you to the laboratory, all his fantastic undergraduate researcher help including Josie Van Tilburg, Khalid Abrera, and lab alums Abi Elerding and Sofia Shirley. All of whom really made critical contributions to the project on the ground. Thanks for everyone's helpful feedback and input throughout. Excited to see where Raaj is headed next! Congrats Raaj!
MAY | Congratulations to Eric Zhang for winning the Judy Su prize at Academic Night last night, with a really polished talk and presentation. Congrats are also in order for Raaj Gowrishankar and Avi Matarasso who received additional acknowledgement from 3rd place and Honorable mention achievements. It is great to see all the success of our lab in our UW community and beyond!
MAY | Congratulations to Elena Judd on passing her General Exam for PhD Candidacy in the Program for Neuroscience. Elena did a great job handling all the very specific questions Thanks to the lab effort in helping to prepare her for the big day!
MAY | Congratulations to Madison Martin on passing her General Exam today for PhD Candidacy in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience. Nice work Madison, and thanks to the lab for all the help preparing her. Madison had a good nearly 1.5hrs of solid questioning from her committee and did a fantastic job handling them and the intensity of the moment
MAY | Congratulations to Sarah Thai and Sean Piantadosi on their notice of the Student Technology Fee Committee award “New Data Analysis Computers for the Neurobiology of Addiction, Pain, and Emotion (NAPE) Center”!
MAY | Congratulations to David Marcus on the acceptance of his "Tome" of a review in Pharmacological Reviews (a very top journal in the field of neuropharm), titled "Optical approaches for investigating neuromodulation and G Protein-Coupled Receptor signaling". Look for the final MS online soon. Nice work David. Dr. Bruchas enjoyed working on this one together with you, and we expect it will garner lots of citations, since it has a ton of useful content.
APRIL | Congratulations to Carrie Stine on her notice of award for her F31 application titled “Dissecting stress modulation of pnVTA nociceptin peptide-mediated approach-av”. So happy for Carrie and her perseverance on this proposal after a bit of a roller coaster of an award process! Super well deserved! Thanks for all the lab members past and present who’ve contributed and continue to work with Carrie on her efforts! Excited for the next discoveries using the new NOP sensor!
APRIL | Congratulations Li Li for acceptance of a research faculty position at Seattle Children’s Research Institute this coming summer, while also remaining UW faculty and part of NAPE. We’ve been lucky to have him as part of our team for his many discoveries and for his contributions to our science and undergraduate mentoring!
MARCH | Congratulations to Phoenix Davis on receiving a Scan Design Fellowship in Pain Research for this summer 2023! Super awesome news! It is always a highly competitive Scan field, with many great applicants (including other great applicant from our own group) . So thanks to everyone in the lab who worked hard and submitted applications! Thank-you to Kasey Girven and Leandra Mangieri on their help mentoring Phoenix! Great work Phoenix, excited to have you in lab this summer!
MARCH | Congratulations to Ananya Achanta, Khushi Yadav, Sarah Thai, and Rachel Oommen who all received Mary Gates Scholarships today!!! Fabulous news for the lab and their burgeoning research efforts. Thanks to all the mentors who have worked with these students for their success, and providing this exceptional opportunity for their future careers! Congrats everyone, awesome job!
MARCH | Congratulations to Raaj Gowrishankar who received a "Perfect Score" of 10 on his NIH/NIDA K99/R00 proposal, Pathway to Independence, titled "Elucidating the role of the endogenous opioid dynorphin in reward seeking". Incredible journey for Raaj on this application, but his perseverance paid off hugely, and this news is long over due! Thanks to all the lab who supported this research and his efforts. This includes several amazing undergraduate researchers, as well as all the trainee's and staff!! (This 10 is only the third perfect score in the lab's history - we have an F31 - former student and now PI, Jordan McCall), and a T32 (Me as Co-PI, Co-Director) where this has happened! Such fantastic news, and proud to see how determination can often win the day!!!!
FEBRUARY | Congratulations to Catalina Zamorano who received a great score on her A0 submission of a NIDA F31, NRSA titled “Mu-opioids in the VTA”! Very grateful for the many folks in the lab who worked with or supported Cats efforts. Fantastic news!
FEBRUARY | Congratulations to Avi Matarasso who passed their PhD Candidate General Qualification exam today! The committee was “impressed with all the data and hard work which was presented”. Thanks to all the labs support on and offline in Avi’s project! Awesome work, Avi!
JANUARY | Congratulations to Elena Seaholm for winning a Mary Gates Scholarship back to back!!! Great achievement unlocked, and we are lucky to have you in the laboratory working with us! Best of luck this quarter! Thanks for all the mentoring, Avi Matarasso, and many others who have been working with Elena over the years!
2022
NOVEMBER | Congratulations to everyone in the lab who's been actively working on neuromodulatory sensors, especially! I want to especially thank Daniel Castro, Catalina Zamorano, Carrie Stine, Raaj Gowrishankar, and many other people who helped generate or analyze preliminary data. Our MPI BRAIN Initiative R01 grant with Andre Berndt (BioE) and Jennifer Deem (UW Endocrinology) titled "High-throughput engineering of ligand-selective fluorescent biosensors for detecting endogenous and exogenous opioids" received a super competitive score of 25 Impact (no percentile on these) in review! Excited to have funding in hand hopefully soon (early 2023) to continue working seriously on neuropeptide sensor development. - MRB
NOVEMBER | Congratulations to Carrie Stine on receiving a super competitive, very fundable NRSA F31 score today for her project titled "Dissecting stress modulation of pnVTA nociceptin peptide-mediated approach-avoidance behavior". Thanks to everyone in the lab who has worked with Carrie to modify, discuss and advise on this application. Carrie received a great score on her A0, but has persisted and continues to fight for her ideas and this proposal! It is a tough path, but it's awesome to be part of a research group that keeps pushing themselves and fighting for their careers and scientific passions!
NOVEMBER | Congratulations to Kasey Girven who was selected for the (American College of Neuropsychopharmacology) ACNP 2023 Near-Peer URM Mentorship program! This is a competitive award, which provides support for the conference, invitations to ACNP 2023, alongside unique training, networking, skill building, and mentoring opportunities! Super excited for Kasey to benefit from this program, which is co-led by CIMER, the Center for the Improvement for Mentored Experiences in Research.
NOVEMBER | Congratulations to Catalina Zamorano on her first publication in the lab (A Mini-Review/Preview in Cell) titled "Visualizing ligand bias at the Mu-opioid receptor". Great job, Cat, pulling this together with only about a week's notice!
OCTOBER | Congratulations to Phoenix Davis who won the Levinson Emerging Scholars Award for the 22-23 academic year!!! A very competitive award and an amazing accomplishment. Really outstanding news! Congrats also to mentors Leandra Mangieri, Kasey Girven, and Azra Suko, among all the many others in lab, who continue to inspire exciting research in our amazing UW undergrads!
SEPTEMBER | Congratulations to Kasey Girven and Leandra Mangieri on the acceptance of their review publication in Trends in Neuroscience, titled: "Emerging approaches for decoding neuropeptide transmission". Thanks for all the hard work and efforts from the lab on figure edits and ideas.
AUGUST | Congratulations to Eric Zhang who received a Notice of Award for his F31 NRSA Fellowship titled "Elucidating the Role of Noradrenergic Circuitry in Aversive Contextual Processing". Awesome work Eric! His score went from a Not Discussed (ND) to funded, because he made many new changes, listened to reviewer and lab feedback and polished it super well! Thanks to everyone in the lab who helped Eric at the bench, and in writing his application!
AUGUST | Congratulations to Kasey Girven on receiving a notice of award for a Post Doc F32 NRSA from NIDA!!! Kasey will continue to explore the role of NPS and its receptor in reward and motivated behaviors! Thank-you for all the help supporting her award. Especially Kat Motovilov, Phoenix Davis and all the input from many lab members including Charles Zhou who was critical as always in helping facilitate the imaging components. Great job Kasey! And also another Team W!
JULY | Congratulations to Jingyi Chen, Kasey Girven, Raaj Gowrishankar, and David Marcus who all had fantastic interactions, posters and engagement at the conference. It's a privilege to go to meetings, and there were nothing but great things said about your work, smarts, and enthusiasm! Great job! Keep it up!
JULY | Congratulations to Li Li on winning honorable mention at the OptoGRC meeting for his poster presentation! Congratulations also to Sean Piantadosi on winning best poster Award at the OptoGRC meeting! Awesome job both of you. Way to represent the lab, NAPE, UW! So proud!
JULY | Congratulations to Jingyi Chen who was awarded a three year Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Post-doc Fellowship! This is a very competitive fellowship, and very much deserved. Jingyi has been hard at work on many foundation fellowships due to her international status, and it's fantastic to see all that hard work pay off with this award! Great job!
JULY | Congratulations to Carrie Stine on winning "Best Poster award" at the INRC meeting in Valencia, Spain! She tied with a few others, but way to represent the lab, UW, and NAPE Center, Carrie! Awesome job!
JULY | Congratulations to Sean Piantadosi on being awarded the ACNP Travel Award 2022! Very competitive field, and quite exciting development. Sean will now have 4 invites to attend future meetings to present his work and network!
MAY | Congratulations to Avi Matarasso on the receipt of their F31 NRSA from NIDA to study the relationships of Dopamine and Norepinephrine in Reward and Aversive learning in the Hippocampus and BLA. Thank-you to the many lab members who worked with Avi to edit, polish, discuss ideas, and inform experiments. It's very competitive to land a F31 on the first try, so the entire lab is very enthusiastic for Avi and the future of Avi’s research and training efforts!
MAY | Congratulations to Veronica Porubsky on passing her General Exam for full PhD candidacy in BioE today. Fantastic effort! We are grateful to have Veronica as a guest researcher in the lab. Looking forward to seeing the project’s evolution and discoveries to come.
MARCH | Congratulations to Eric Zhang on passing his BioE PhD General Exam. Great job Eric! Really excellent presentation and handling it very well!
FEBRUARY | Congratulations to Dr. Andrew Luskin on the successful completion of his PhD defense, “A diverse network of Peri-Coeruler neruons control arousal”!
JANUARY | Dr. Mitra Heshmati, PhD, MD, publishes “Historical and modern evidence for the role of reward circuitry in emergence” in Anesthesiology.
JANUARY | Congratulations to Leandra Mangieri on receiving the “Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship” for her work focusing on understanding the neural circuit basis of Stress-Induced Binge Eating! Leandra will present her research project at the Keystone Meeting this Spring.
2021
DECEMBER | Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Castro, Assistant Professor for starting his new position at the Biophotonics Research Center (BRC), Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in St. Louis!
DECEMBER | Congratulations to Fleur Uittenbogaard and Esther Li for receiving the Mary Gates Endowment for students!
DECEMBER | Anthony English successfully passed his General Exam for his PhD in Pharmacology. Well done, Anthony!
DECEMEBER | Congratulations to Avi Matarasso for his F31 NRSA titled “Norepinephrine and dopamine dynamics during conditioned place preference and aversion in dorsal hippocampus”!
NOVEMBER | Carrie Stine successfully passed her General Exam for her PhD in MCB. Congrats, Carrie!
OCTOBER | Congratulations to Dong-Oh and Eric Zhang on their publication in Neuron titled “A locus coeruleus to dentate gyrus noradrenergic circuit modulates aversive contextual processing”
JUNE | Avi Matarasso successfully passed his General Exam for the BioE PhD program. Congrats, Avi!
JUNE | Congratulations to Daniel Castro, Corinna Oswell, Eric Zhang, Christian Pedersen, Sean Piantadosi and others on the acceptance of their paper titled “An endogenous opioid circuit determines state-dependent reward consumption” in Nature!
JUNE | David Marcus receives Notice of Award for his F32 Post-Doctoral Training Fellowship titled “Neurotensinergic-eCB modulation of reward and aversion via a PVT-NAc circuit.” Congrats, David!
MAY | Dr. Christian Pedersen successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations, Christian!
May | Congrats to Elena Seaholm and Fleur Uittenbogaard on receiving the NAPE Undergraduate Research Award!
2020
SEPTEMBER | Daniel Castro is promoted to Acting Instructor.
JULY | Daniel Castro is awarded an ACNP Travel Award
JUNE | Christian Pedersen is awarded an F31 NRSA Fellowship. Congrats, Christian!
JUNE | Andrew Luskin is awarded an F31 NRSA Fellowship. Congrats, Andrew!
JUNE | Carina Pizziano joins the laboratory as research technician. Welcome, Carina!
JUNE | Andrew Luskin successfully passes his qualifying exams. Congrats, Andrew!
JUNE | The Bruchas Lab is awarded a BRAIN Initiative R01 with Dr. Yi Zhang and Dr. John Rogers! Congratulations!
MAY | Avi Matarasso joins the laboratory. Welcome, Avi!
APRIL | Kasey Girven, Ph.D. joins the laboratory. Welcome, Kasey!
APRIL | Anthony English, Pharmacology Graduate Student, begins his rotation in the Bruchas laboratory. Welcome, Anthony!
APRIL | Corinna Oswell, MCB Undergraduate, was awarded the 2020 SCAN Design Innovation in Pain Summer Research Award
APRIL | Sofia Shirley, MCB Undergraduate, was awarded the 2020 SCAN Design Innovation in Pain Summer Research Award
MARCH | Corinna Oswell, MCB Undergraduate, was awarded the Mary Gates Foundation Fellowship
MARCH | Shane Kan, Biochemistry Undergraduate, was awarded the Mary Gates Foundation Fellowship
MARCH | Bryce Kan, MCB Undergraduate, was awarded the Mary Gates Foundation Fellowship
MARCH | Carrie Stine, MCB Graduate Student, has joined the lab. Welcome Carrie!
MARCH | David Marcus, Ph.D. joins the laboratory. Welcome, David!
MARCH | Daniel Castro, Ph.D. is awarded a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award. Congrats, Daniel!
2019
NOVEMBER | Daniel Castro was award the Judy Su Travel Award
SEPTEMBER | The Bruchas Lab is awarded an R01, for the “HEAL Initiative” - a collaboration with Dr. Tom Kilduff at the Stanford Research Institute! Congratulations!
JUNE | Daniel Castro is awarded the Judy Su Award for Basic Science Research
AUGUST | Sean Piantadosi, Ph.D joins the laboratory. Welcome, Sean!
2018
NOVEMBER | Michael R. Bruchas has been awarded the prestigious Jacob P. Waletsky Award for early career achievement in the neuroscience of addiction!
OCTOBER | The Bruchas Lab has moved to University of Washington to join the new Center of Excellence in Neurobiology of Addiction, Pain and Emotion!
SEPTEMBER | Michael R. Bruchas has been awarded a 10 year long NIH R01 MERIT Award for the continued investigation of the role of the kappa opioid receptor system in addiction and affective behavior!
AUGUST | Raaj Gowrishankar and Leandra Mangieri join the laboratory as postdoctoral research fellows. Welcome Leandra and Raaj!
MAY | Eric Zhang, a BME graduate student has joined the lab. Welcome Eric!
2017
JUNE I Dr. Michael R. Bruchas has accepted an invitation from the NIH to serve as chairperson of the Molecular Neuropharmacology and Signaling Study Section at the Center for Scientific Review, for a two year term beginning July 1, 2017.
MAY I Marissa Hansen, Neuroscience Major at the University of Texas at Austin, was accepted into the Undergraduate BP-ENDURE program through DBBS and will work this summer in the Bruchas Lab. Marissa was selected from over 100 applicants into the program. Welcome Marissa!
APRIL I Christian Pedersen, a BME Grad Student and Andrew Luskin, a DBBS Neuroscience Graduate Students have joined the lab. Welcome Christian and Andrew!
JANUARY | Dylan Blumenthal joins the laboratory. Welcome Dylan!
2016
OCTOBER | Michael R. Bruchas, PhD has received $3.8 million in NIH funding to develop tools for mapping and activating pathways in the brain with light. You can read the full article published by WUSTL TheSOURCE here.
SEPTEMBER | Congratulations to Dong-Oh Seo and Stephanie Nygard on their Journal of Neuroscience paper acceptance.
JULY | Christine Stander has joined the lab as the Research Laboratory Manager. Welcome Christine!
FEBRUARY | Bruchas Lab featured on HEC-TV: Remote Controlled Medication. Creating the possibility for remote controlled medication: direct drug delivery to the brain using a hand held remote.
2015
SEPTEMBER | WUSTL TheSOURCE published a Press Release on Jordan McCall's Neuron paper. Reward, aversion behaviors activated through same brain pathways. Findings may help explain why drugs for addiction, depression are not always effective.
JULY | Jordan McCall, Ph.D Press Release on a paper published in Cell - "Wireless Optofluidic Systems for Programmable In Vivo Pharmacology and Optogenetics"
JULY | Bruchas Lab featured in the Daily Beast - This Device Brings 'Brave New World' to Life
JUNE | Kyle Parker, Ph.D joins the laboratory. Welcome Kyle!
JUNE | Dong-oh Seo, Ph.D joins the laboratory. Welcome Dong-oh!
MAY | Jordan McCall and Ed Siuda, two neuroscience Ph.D students in the laboratory successfully defend their dissertations and graduate with a Ph.D in Neuroscience from Washington University! Congratulations Jordan and Ed!
APRIL | The Bruchas Lab publishes a new paper in Neuron. The publication features a new optogenetic tool for control of opioid signaling pathways in vitro and in vivo. The tool is a receptor chimera that links class A, GPCR rhodopsin receptor components to mu-opioid receptor components to achieve a new receptor tool. The work was featured in several press releases and a lay description with audio interview can be found here: Link. The article was featured in the May, 20th issue with an additional preview commentary here: Link
FEBRUARY | Ream Al-Hasani is awarded the prestigious "Pathway to Independence Award" from NIDA. This K99-R00 mechanism provides her with an additional two years of mentored phase funding, and 3 years of R01-like funding for when she opens her own independent laboratory. Congratulations Ream! For more information on her project visit this link.
2014
SEPTEMBER | Li Xia, M.S., joins the laboratory. Li is a second year Biomedical Engineering Ph.D student. Welcome Li!
JULY | Adrian Gomez, Ph.D joins the laboratory. Welcome Adrian!
JULY | Michael is awarded the Young Investigator Award from the International Narcotics Research Conference, INRC. The annual meeting which focuses on opioids is held every year across the world. In 2014 it was held in Montreal, Quebec. In accepting the award, Michael spoke about his prior and the current active research in the laboratory focused on dissecting the role of Kappa-opioid systems in reward and aversion.
JULY | Jordan McCall, a graduate student in the laboratory is awarded the Lindau prize, to attend a select conference in Germany with 37 Nobel Lauretes. Congrats Jordan!
FEBRUARY | Stephanie Nygard, Ph.D joins the laboratory. Welcome Stephanie!
2013
OCTOBER | The Bruchas Lab was granted a 4 year R01 research award called EUREKA (Exceptional Unconventional Research for Enabling Knowledge Acceleration) to examine the role of stress neuropeptides and G-protein coupled receptors in negative affective behaviors and addiction. The grant comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and uses numerous behavioral, biochemical, and novel optogenetic hardware approaches for understanding how stress influences reward behaviors.
AUGUST | The Bruchas Lab is granted a 5 years research grant (its first individual R01) to examine the role of Kappa-opioid receptors in selected neural circuits in nicotine induced behaviors. The grant comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and uses numerous behavioral, biochemical, and optogenetic approaches for understanding how stress causes reinstatement of nicotine preference.
JUNE | Skylar Spangler, a neuroscience graduate student, joins the lab. Welcome Skylar!
JUNE | Jordan McCall, a neuroscience graduate student in the lab is awarded an NRSA from the National Institute for Mental Health. Congrats Jordan!
APRIL | The Bruchas Lab publishes wireless optogenetics paper in Science.
In collaborative efforts with Dr. John Roger's Lab at the University of Illinois, we developed the ability to control mouse behavior using a novel form of wireless optogenetics. The paper demonstrates various modes of operation in vitro and in vivo for these cellular scale LED devices.
2012
TRANSFORMATIVE R01, COLLABORATION AWARDED
Robert Gereau IV, Professor of Anesthesiology and Michael R. Bruchas, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology are awarded a Directors Common Fund Transformative Research Award with John Rogers, Ph.D, University of Illinois. Gereau, Bruchas, and Rogers will be working to develop tiny, LED devices that could allow them to map the molecular and cellular properties of neural circuits. With this knowledge, scientists can better understand how those circuits transmit information after pain and nerve injury, or in reward and stress-induced behaviors.
2011
AUGUST 11TH, 2011 NEURON, COVER ARTICLE
P38 MAPK, SEROTONIN, AND STRESS-INDUCED BEHAVIOR
On the cover: Selective p38α MAPK deletion in serotonergic neurons produces stress-resilience in models of depression and addiction. In this issue of Neuron, Bruchas et al. found that activation of p38α only in serotonin neurons is required for stress-induced behaviors. The cover is a graphite drawing, made by the artist Robyn O'Neil and titled “These final hours embrace at last; this is our ending, this is our past.” She explains that the image depicts one man hanging by a fraying thread above a monstrous ocean. A darkening lid of clouds threatens from overhead, and a tumultuous body of water reaches up from underneath. He is shown in a maddening in-between, a most stressful of dilemmas, and where some would say rests the human condition. Artwork by Robyn O'Neil (http://robynoneil.com).
JUNE 2011, Jordan McCall and Ed Siuda, DBBS Neuroscience Graduate Students, join the Bruchas Lab. Welcome!
MARCH 2011, Ream Al-Hasani, Ph.D joins the Lab. Welcome, Ream!