Principal Investigator
Ariel Levine, M.D., Ph.D: Ariel went to Brandeis University for undergraduate studies and graduated in 2000. She then went to the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program and earned a PhD from The Rockefeller University in 2008 and an MD from Cornell University in 2009. During her graduate research with Dr. Ali Brivanlou, she studied the role of TGF-B signaling during embryonic development. She then did postdoctoral research with Dr. Samuel Pfaff at The Salk Institute, where she identified a novel population of spinal neurons that encode motor synergies ‒ modular neural programs for simple movements that are thought to underlie a wide variety of common behaviors. Ariel joined NINDS as an Earl Stadtman tenure-track investigator in 2015 and became a tenured Senior Investigator in 2024.
Current Members
Li Li: Lab Manager
Fabricio do Couto Nicola: Postdoctoral Fellow
Prasong (Jerry) Mekdara: Postdoctoral Fellow
Brian Roome: Postdoctoral Fellow
Ashley Tucker: Postdoctoral Fellow
Yasin Al-Hadid: Postbaccalaureate Fellow
Postdoctoral, Graduate Student, and Research Fellow Alumni
Ryan Patterson-Cross (research fellow 2019-2020) next position: Computational biologist, University of Cambridge
Kaya Matson: (graduate Student, NIH-Johns Hopkins GPP program 2017-2022) next/current position: Postdoc with Dr. Erika Holzbauer at U. Penn
Anupama Sathyamurthy (postdoc 2016-2020) next/current position: Faculty Fellow at IIST-Bangalore
Postbaccalaureate Fellow Alumni
Eugene Kim: next position: MD-PhD student, Baylor University
Isabelle Hua: next position: MD-PhD student, University of Colorado
Stefan Stoica next position: Postbac fellow, NINDS
Courtney Dobrott next position: Graduate student, University of Colorado - Abigail Person lab
Aaron Bickert next position: Postbac fellow, NCI
Anna Ryba next position: Graduate student, Rockefeller University - Vanessa Ruta lab