Category Archive for : ‘Palmer Lab News’

Dr. Oksana Polesskaya is the new Scientific Coordinator for the NIDA Center for GWAS in Outbred Rats! The Scientific Coordinator is a crucial part of the Administrative Core, which is based at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Polesskaya obtained her PhD from Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia, followed by a post-doc at George Mason University where she studied drug abuse in rats. She then moved to the field of HIV/AIDS and completed another post-doc at the University of Rochester and became a Research Assistant Professor. There, she worked on

Jungkyun Seo will join the Palmer Lab in January!

He recently completed his M.S. in Statistics at the University of Chicago. He also worked as a Research Assistant in Nancy Cox’s lab, where he analyzed large sets of genomic data for complex trait associations and discovered his interest in genetics. He now brings his excellent computational skills to the Palmer Lab to gain further experience while applying to graduate programs.

April Williams has also accepted a post-doc position and will join the Palmer Lab in Spring 2015! She is currently finishing her PhD in Coleen Murphy’s lab at Princeton University. Her dissertation is titled “Transcriptional Profiling of Dissociated Adult Caenorhabditis elegans Tissues”.

Amanda Barkley-Levenson has accepted a post-doc position and will join the Palmer Lab in Spring 2015! She is currently finishing her PhD in John Crabbe’s lab at the Oregon Health & Sciences University. Her dissertation is titled “The role of neuropeptide Y in binge-like drinking in mice”.

Dr. Jianjun Gao has joined the lab! He will be an instrumental part of the P50 grant, where he will use his impressive background in biostatistics to develop novel and efficient methods of analyzing complex genotype and behavioral phenotype data. Dr. Gao obtained his PhD from the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences – Chinese Academy of Sciences, was an Assistant Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He brings over a decade of computational experience to the project

Dr. Peter Carbonetto accepts a position at www.Ancestory.com

Dr. Carbonetto spent a year in the Palmer lab during which time he contributed to several projects that are only now being published.

Her undergraduate thesis is titled “Mapping of anxiety-like traits in an advanced intercross line of mice.”

Emily will start her MPH at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in NYC this fall!

Camila will start her PhD in Neuroscience at the Sackler School for Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University in Boston this fall!

• “Liking Amphetamine Linked to Reduced Risk of Mental Disorder,” featured on The Scientist
• “Genetic Predisposition To Liking Amphetamine Reduces Risk Of Schizophrenia And ADHD” featured on Science Life
• “Genetic predisposition to liking amphetamine reduces risk of schizophrenia and ADHD” featured on The University of Chicago Medicine 2014 Press Releases
• “Enjoy The Feeling Of Adderall? You May Be Less Likely To Develop ADHD” featured on Popular Science
• “Genes for ‘Liking’ Amphetamine Lower Schizophrenia, ADHD Risk” featured on Medscape Medical News (Psychiatry)
• Almetric score: 95- article in the top 5% of all articles ranked by attention