Category Archive for : ‘Palmer Lab News’

Please join us at the San Diego Convention Center for SfN/Neuroscience 2025!
Visit us at the RATTACA booth to support the HS rats P30 center!

Sunday, November 16 – Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Dr. Abraham Palmer and Palmer Lab members will be hosting the RATTACA booth:

Remember to tag #RATTACA on social media!

See the post from SfN 2024 here!

Dr. Brittany Leger successfully defended her thesis titled “Utilizing a network biology framework to integrate GWAS signal across species, variants, and traits” on September 15, 2025. 

Congratulations, Dr. Leger!

See additional photos in the Photo Gallery!

Palmer Lab member Daniel Munro is participating in a NASA study to test a denitrogenation protocol to reduce the risk of decompression sickness in astronauts during spacewalks!

Starting today, he will live for a week in an altitude chamber at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas with seven other test subjects and perform activities to simulate extravehicular activity (EVA) conditions. The results of this research will inform the design of Artemis missions to the moon and beyond.

Jaxon Leighty joined the Palmer Lab in June 2025 as part of the Research Experiences for High School and Undergraduate Students (REHU) summer program through our P30 Center. He is a high school senior at SET High School and plans to pursue a career in molecular biology.

Welcome, Jaxon!

Mohammad joined the Palmer Lab in June 2025 as a laboratory/animal assistant. His research interest is in the gut-brain axis.

Welcome, Mohammad!

Yixuan (Ivy) Xin joined the Palmer Lab in May 2025 as part of the Research Experiences for High School and Undergraduate Students (REHU) summer program.

Ivy is an undergraduate at UC San Diego with research interests in machine learning, sleep, mental disorders, and substance use disorders.

Welcome, Ivy!

Dr. Daniel Munro has been promoted to Assistant Project Scientist!

Congratulations, Daniel!

We are pleased to announce that after a department-wide search, Dr. Abraham Palmer has been selected to continue as Vice Chair of Basic Science Research in the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Palmer commenced the role of Vice Chair of Basic Science Research in 2016.

Dr. Palmer and two members of the Palmer Lab attended the annual American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting in Denver, Colorado, November 5-9, 2024.

Brittany Leger and Sabrina Mi each presented a poster at the meeting.

Our recently-funded NIDA P30 Center grant was announced in the campus publication UC San Diego Today.

The article is titled “UC San Diego Awarded $8 Million to Uncover Genetic Foundations of Substance Use Disorders.”