About Renée

In 2010, I decided to skip medical school in pursuit of a life-long career in science. While not that far removed from medicine, science was were I found my thrill, my passion. I began conducting research in 2012 in the laboratories of Dr. Hoi-Chung Leung (Dept. of Psychology) and Dr. Mary Frame (Dept. of Biomedical Engineering), both at Stony Brook Univeristy, where I completed my undergraduate studies. With Dr. Leung, I got my toes wet in human behavioral, EEG and fMRI studies on working memory and physiological metrics gleaned from pupil responses during task engagement. On the other side of campus, I practiced fine motor coordination skills by cannulating small blood vessels, performing ex vivo analysis on the endovascular effects of acetyl choline in a rodent burn model. From there, I gained an appreciation for multi-disciplinary approaches to science and different models of study, realizing it matters most how we can best address the scientific question at hand. 

Deciding to go international, I left my home in New York at 21 with 3 suitcases, a bag of bagels, and a Bachelor’s degree in hand (like literally, I brought an original copy with me to Germany to register for grad school). Being European American there was something I had always fancied about the fatherland, and the thought of exploring that land, while also exploring the brain, well, that was the ultimate dream! And, just like I predicted from the first time I saw Tübingen (on Wikipedia actually), a quaint medieval German university town of ~76,000 people (in 2013) had captured my heart. 

I spent nearly six years in Tübingen, where I completed my studies at the Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience under the mentorship of Belgian neuroanatomist Dr. Henry Evrard. My graduate work was integrative, multi-modal, and at the cusp of translational insights on the brain's anatomical-functional organization in humans and closely related species, specifically macaque monkeys. The series of studies done to examine the localization of specific functional processes related to the body (and taste) in an integral part of cortex ('the insula') revealed many similarities between humans and non-human primates. With such knowledge, researchers can implement suitable paradigms in non-human primates to further study how high-level functioning typical in humans may be shared with other species. These studies have the potential to identify species-specific equivalents that can be coupled with high-resolution neuronal recording methods, in essence, capturing information vital to understanding the responsible neurobiological mechanisms. 

In 2019 I moved to Frankfurt, one of the few cities in Germany with skyscrapers, which has earned Frankfurt the rightful nickname Main-hattan, for being a small (German) Manhattan, situated on the river Main. This is also the year I began working in the lab of German Professor Wolfgang Kelsch at the Central Institute for Mental Health (CIMH) in Mannheim and the University of Heidelberg. Research in the KelschLab took me from fMRI in primates to fMRI in rodents, with the incorporation of multi-site electrophysiological recordings in the awake state during olfaction and reward learning processing. In 2020, I was awarded a TransMed/Focus Translational Neurosciences (FTN) Postdoctoral Fellowship for pursuing a research program at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany. This brought me from conducting research on reward-associated odor processing circuits in health to studying the behavioral and physiological phenotypes of transgenic models of neuropsychiatric disorders, namely Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Besides academia, I work to support my passions for traveling, expanding the mind, science communication, and documenting life (because it gets crazier everyday). I organize educational outreach programs and enjoy connecting with others from across the globe. I have engaged with several universities in sub-Sahara Africa and organize a traveling symposium dubbed: Collaborative Science Symposium, or CSS for short. You can learn more about my work in Africa via TReND in Africa. In partnership with TReND, I am also contributing to the establishment of a new bioimaging center in Western Africa, namely the BioRTC, with initiative founder Dr. Mahmoud Maina. 

Overall, I'm a collaborative working partner and believe that amazing things can happen when brilliant minds meets. In 2023, my trajectory brings me full circle - back to where it all started, New York. This is nonetheless a stimulating period with many new beginnings. One beginning starts at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research where my research endeavors will continue at the Center for Biomedical Imaging and Neuromodulation. Stay tuned for more exciting news to come!