UTSA Neurosciences Institute - The University of Texas at San Antonio

ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
FALL 2013
UT SA
Ne u r o s c i e nces Institute
Comprehensive Report
Neuroscience Research 2012-13
Personnel
DIRECTOR
Charles J. Wilson PhD
Ewing Halsell Chair of Biology
Reports to George Perry PhD
College of Science
Campus Address
BSB 1.03.14
[email protected]
tel: 210.458.5658
fax: 210.458.7491
Research Website:
http://marlin.life.utsa.edu
Institute Website:
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
Institute inception year: 2008
Current reporting period:
Fiscal Data follows FY 2012
9.1.2012- 8.31.2013
Publications and other events cover
9.1.12-12.31.13
The Director of the UTSA
Neurosciences Institute is Dr. Charles
Wilson, who is the Ewing Halsell Chair
of Biology. Dr. Salma Quraishi serves daily
operations as Associate Director, and Mr.
Gregory Granados (Administrative
Associate II) manages fiscal operations.
Our current Research Investigator roster
is comprised of 25 faculty and 6 postdocs from 7 departments across 5
colleges. See Appendix for affiliations.
History
In 2005, a core group of Neuroscience
faculty began building a programmatic
grant proposal under the National
Institute for Neurological Disorders and
Stroke’s (NINDS) Specialized
Neuroscience Research Program (SNRP).
This multicomponent center grant
proposed to establish a rigorous and
interactive neuroscience community at
UTSA via support of mentorship, scientific
training, and a culture of achievement. The
program was successfully funded in 2007,
and its early promise seeded the UTSA
Neurosciences Institute in 2008. The
Institute’s mission considerably expanded
on that of the SNRP grant, and has
galvanized UTSA’s diverse multidisciplinary
subfields into a cohesive and vibrant
neuroscience program that is measurably
accelerating the pace of neuroscience
research at UTSA.
Overview
Mission
The UTSA Neurosciences Institute
mission is to foster a collaborative
community of scientists committed to
studying the biological basis of human
experience and behavior, and the origin
and treatment of nervous system diseases.
Areas of special emphasis include:
Nervous system development; neuronal
and network computation; sensory,
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
motor, and cognitive function; learning and
memory, and the disease processes that
impact them; implementing mathematical
and computational tools in experimental
neurobiology; and mathematical theory of
neurons and nervous systems.
Goals
The Institute’s most vital and
comprehensive goal is to promote
excellence in our research-active
neuroscience community. To this end, we
seek to:
•Enhance the Research Environment
for Neuroscientists at UTSA by
sponsoring research seminars and
symposia, and by building and
maintaining research core facilities.
•Promote the Careers of UTSA
Neuroscientists in all Colleges and
Departments by organizing peer
mentoring, and other communitybuilding activities.
•Enhance the Intellectual
Environment at UTSA and in the San
Antonio community with public
Neuroscience educational events.
•Enhance Neuroscience Education at
UTSA at the undergraduate and
graduate levels by sponsoring
Neuroscience research-related training
and opportunities for students.
•Promote Collaborative
Neuroscience as a means to build
innovative, multidisciplinary research
programs.
Our goals for research align with, and
expand upon those of UTSA by
underscoring the reality that our faculty
must compete and excel in a larger
context than the institution alone; we
focus on promoting the careers and
developing the national scientific stature of
our faculty as the single most effective
means to research excellence for the
institution.
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
FALL 2013
Erich Jarvis Public Lecture, 2012
Symposium 2011
Top 5 initiatives of 2013
1. Research Environment:
Symposia, Lectures & Cores
Neuroscience Symposium.
Our annual Research Symposia
are major events for the Institute, in
which giants in a neuroscience discipline
are brought together to give the San
Antonio research community an
intensive day of talks centered around a
theme. The theme highlights the
research interests of one of our junior
faculty, who also serves as organizer and
speaks among the panel. These events
are great exposure for UTSA, our
faculty, and elevate research for our
group by providing a diverse roster of
thematic neuroscience research done at
the highest level. The Institute held its
fifth annual symposium in the current
reporting period (see Appendix for a
listing of past symposia).
The 2013 symposium on Power
Law Dynamics in the Brain united
3 acclaimed computational researchers
to muse on the importance of criticality
to brain function, and how scaleinvariant biophysical models might be
leveraged to understand neural
dynamics. On the panel were: Larry
Abbott (Columbia U), John Beggs (U of
Indiana), and Dietmar Plenz (NIMH).
Speaking among them was the
symposium’s host and organizer, Institute
Investigator Fidel Santamaria. Our
Director, Charles Wilson led a panel
discussion with the guests in a podcast
that is available as part of the Institute’s
Neuroscientists Talk Shop Podcast series.
The symposium was attended by around
40 researchers, fellows, and students
from the departments at UTSA, UT
Austin and the University of Houston.
Neurobiology Seminars.
The Institute annually supports 6-8 of
the Biology Department’s
Neurobiology Seminars. One
scheduled seminar was moved to 2014;
the resulting six supported research
seminars are listed in the box, right.
Shared Instrumentation Cores.
The Institute is building research
capacity through support of two shared
instrumentation facilities: the
Optogenetics Core, and the 2Photon Microscopy Lab. Both are
available for use by Neuroscience
researchers at UTSA.
The Optogenetics Core is open to
Investigators requiring fabrication and/or
live animal implantation of optrodes or
chronic multi-channel electrodes for
neuroscience research applications. It
was established in 2010 via funding from
the San Antonio Life Sciences Institute
Neuroscience Infrastructure program.
In September 2011 it was transferred to
the Neurosciences Institute, where we
extended its scope to support the
development of in vivo optogenetic viral
injections. Optogenetics is an exciting
new technology that makes possible
highly selective, cellular and pathway
level stimulation of neural circuits.
The 2-Photon Microscopy Lab is
comprised of two multi-photon imaging
systems fully equipped for in vitro
electrophysiology and live tissue imaging.
Initially erected by the NIH/NCRR
RCMI grant, as of 2012 the core became
fully supported and maintained by the
Neurosciences Institute.
2. Career Development:
Mentorship Meetings
One of the flagship initiatives of the
Neurosciences Institute is our program
of weekly research & mentorship
meetings. They have served as a
highly effective scientific forum for
building collegiality and promoting
discourse among the Neuroscience
group at UTSA. Their effectiveness is
indexed by the rising collaboration,
funding and publication rates of all the
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
2013 INSTITUTE
SEMINARS
William Armstrong PhD
Professor and Chair
University of TN Health Science Ctr
Calcium-Dependent Spike Afterhyperpolarizations in Oxytocin Neurons:
Targets of Neuroendocrine State Plasticity
01.31.13
Gordon M. Shepherd MD DPhil
Professor of Neurobiology, Yale Med
Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates
Flavor.Toward a Comprehensive Model for
Systems Biology 04.04.13
Samuel Pfaff PhD
Professor, Salk Institute for Biological
Studies
HHMI Investigator
Development of Motor Circuitry 04.18.13
Nina Kraus PhD
Hugh Knowles Professor
Northwestern University
Impact of Auditory Learning: Spotlight on
Bilinguals 10.10.13
Louis Reichardt PhD
Director, Simons Fdn Iniative for Autism
Research.
Professor Emeritus UCSF
Regulators of Cell Adhesion in CNS
Development. Roles of Two Protein Families
that Control Cadherin Function. Afadin and
p120catenin Family Genes 12.05.13
Arnold Kriegstein MD PhD
John G. Bowes Distinguished Professor in
Stem Cell and Tissue Biology, UCSF
New Insights in Human Cortical
Development 12.12.13
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
FALL 2013
Symposium 2013
faculty involved, which has prompted other programs at UTSA
to adopt the format. The meetings initially served faculty grant
writing, ethics and mentoring, but have recently extended into
a forum for PhD students and postdocs to hone grantsmanship
and develop the skills necessary to navigate the ever-changing
federal grant application process.
We have met for two hours nearly every Friday to discuss a
wide range of issues raised by investigators, including UTSA
tenure and promotion policies, how best to manage new
faculty workload, ethical issues related to training students and
postdocs, and best practices in statistics and experimental
design. We spend much time discussing and developing NIH
and NSF grants, and how to craft revisions and rebuttals.
Grant applications are given a mock review early in the process
in order to focus our discussions on the logic, impact, and
design of experiments rather than details. We typically review
proposals three to four times on their way to submission,
perform a postmortem of reviews, and then continue to review
for a few iterations through resubmission. Five members of our
group have served on NIH or NSF review sections, and their
insights have framed many of our discussions.
3. Intellectual Environment: Public Lecture &
Podcast
The UTSA Neurosciences Institute Distinguished Public Lecture.
Our push toward neuroscience literacy and education on
campus and in the community involves branding UTSA as the
major repository for brain science in San Antonio. The
centerpiece of this effort is our annual Distinguished
Neuroscience Lecture for the Public. The format is an
evening lecture by a luminary in the field, whose scientific
research and charismatic delivery underscore to educated and
inquisitive San Antonians that Neuroscience research holds the
key to discovering our human capacities and ultimately who we
are.
The most recent public lecture in 2012 featured HHMI
Investigator and Duke Neurobiologist Erich Jarvis, whose
lecture, Learned Birdsong and the Neurobiology of Human
Language, detailed a motor theory for the origins of human
vocal learning. Over 200 attended the lecture and reception,
which took place in the UTSA Grand Ballroom. While here,
Dr. Jarvis also recorded a podcast for our neuroscience
podcast series, and met with students. For 2013, we had
scheduled Neuroscience legend Rodolfo Llinas, (NYU)
however his talk was cancelled as it followed the devastation of
Dr. Llinas’ home institution by Hurricane Sandy.
The UTSA Neuroscientists Talk Shop Podcast Series.
The Institute continues to build online multimedia content
by adding to its Neurobiology Podcast series,
Neuroscientists Talk Shop. The series features prominent
external Neuroscientists in scholarly yet accessible discussion
with a group of core UTSA Neurobiologists. Discussions are
revelatory of a neuroscience research field in outlining its
history and the process behind the papers. They are a forum
for speculation and critical analysis in the language that
researchers naturally use. Graduate students, venture
capitalists, engineers and enthusiasts from around the world
are among the listeners. This year, 17 new episodes were
recorded and are available at the iTunes Music Store, bringing
the total number of episodes to 108. See box, p. 12, for details.
4. Neuroscience Education: Training Workshops,
Fellowships & Neuro Club
Hands-on Data Workshops.
In recent years, UTSA has amassed a formidable stable of
powerful scientific tools. In the last 5 years, the Institute has
offered a pair of annual workshops that disseminate knowledge
about how researchers can best leverage these robust analytic
tools for their research. In keeping with prior years, one
workshop focused on mining numerical data, and the other
addressed management of image data.
In January, Institute Investigator and Statistics Professor DJ
Ko held a two-part workshop titled, An Intro to Robust
Statistics and R for Biologists. The course built on
previous tutorials using the “R” Statistical language and
featured a unit on erroneous statistical analyses, ways to
visualize variability, and finally some aspects of machine learning
and data mining that are pertinent to biological data sets.
Trainees and faculty from both UTSA and UTHSCSA attended.
In April, Carl Zeiss presented a technical seminar on tissue
imaging: From Superresolution Imaging and
Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy to
Correlative Analysis with Light and Electron
Microscopy. The seminar and luncheon provided instruction
on the extensive software functionality available to confocal
users for image visualization, analysis, and segmentation, as well
as interpretation of 3D multi-channel microscopy datasets.
Matching-funds PhD Fellowships.
In the spirit of encouraging a culture of achievement for
Investigators and trainees, this period we sought to create an
incentive to recognize and reward faculty who are taking the
initiative to win federal grants, and are using them to support
student stipends. We established a competitive MatchingFunds Doctoral Fellowship that was awarded to four
Neurobiology PhD students in 2013. Designed to reward PhD
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
students for research excellence, they
simultaneously relieved funded
Investigators of 6 months of student
support from their Institutesponsored federal grants. The dollar
savings to investigator grants
amounted to $11,500 per Investigator,
to be reinvested into their research
programs.
Undergraduate Neurobiology Club.
Recently, the Department of Biology
instituted a Neurobiology track within
the Undergraduate Biology Major. This
prompted us to craft an initiative to
both attract undergraduates to
neuroscience and build a mentoring
apparatus for undergraduate
neuroscientists at UTSA. With
support solicited from the Mind
Science Foundation, we established an
Undergraduate Neurobiology Club.
The project had two aims; to coalesce
students with a declared interest in
neurobiology under an identifiable
Undergraduate Neurobiology banner,
and then to provide that group with
some practical exposure to the
culture of research through peer and
group mentoring activities. Since the
group’s first meeting in October 2011,
FALL 2013
we have been successful on both
counts and plan to expand the
program’s numbers and scope in the
near term. This mechanism is an
important way to support
undergraduate development, and will
inevitably improve retention and
graduation rates for Biology and
Psychology majors. Organizing and
advising undergraduates will also
enrich the research community by
developing into a powerful mechanism
for recruiting well-prepared, researchready talent to UTSA’s Neurobiology
PhD program. More about the UTSA
Neurobiology Club is detailed under
Research Impact: Outreach Activities.
5. Collaborative Neuroscience
True scientific collaborations require
time to mature and are best cultivated
by creating channels for researchers to
share data and insights. Our current
roster of collaborations reflect an
investment of years of such scientific
exploration and exchange. Some take
the form of institutional subcontracts
or multi-institutional grants; others are
informal arrangements that have
yielded publications during the
SYMPOSIUM 2013
Avalanches, Pools & Pitfalls: Power Law Dynamics in the Brain, 12.06.13
From left: Charles Wilson, Larry Abbott (Columbia), John Beggs (U of Indiana),
Dietmar Plenz (NIMH), and Fidel Santamaria (UTSA).
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
reporting period; still others are
maturing, with at least two that have
resulted in pending grants this period.
Finally, some are in the critical early
stages of exploration, and will
inevitably develop into something
significant over time.
Our Investigators hold a collective
5 multi-institution
collaborations: 2 via the NIH SNRP
grant (Medical University of South
Carolina and The Geisinger Clinic), an
NIH-funded Morris K. Udall Center
project with Northwestern University,
an NSF Collaborative Research in
Computational Neuroscience grant
with a component at UCSF, and finally,
an NSF partnering grant with the
German Ministry of Education and
Research.
We are unable to track the large
number of successful collaborations
maintained by Neurosciences Institute
Investigator and College of Science
Dean Dr. George Perry. Aside from
his numerous collaborative papers,
Institute Investigators published at
least 17 collaborative scientific
journal articles in the current
cycle. These reflect research
performed with numerous domestic
and international researchers at top
tier institutions (e.g., UT Austin, MIT,
UCSD, U of Oregon, Texas A&M, Case
Western, U of Tennessee Health
Sciences Center, U of Pittsburgh, etc),
as well as with other faculty across
departments at UTSA.
A number of investigators are
engaged in gathering exploratory pilot
data with new collaborators, and two
of these were submitted as Co-PI NIH
grant proposals with groups at Emory
University and UTHSCSA. A number
of others are headed toward
submission in the upcoming year.
Finally, the most ambitious of our
collaborative initiatives continues to
mature in 2013. Five years ago, a
subgroup of Institute faculty formed
the Texas Dopamine Club, whose
members include neurophysiology
groups from UTHSCSA, and UT
Austin. The core labs that comprise
this unit are centered around the
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
study of dopamine cell physiology, Parkinson’s disease, and mechanisms of
addiction/reward. They have been meeting on a biannual basis for a day of data
blitzing, research presentations and discussions with a highly regarded guest
speaker. Graduate students, post-docs, undergraduates and technicians from all
labs present research findings to the group, in what is designed to be an
extended lab meeting. Five of the Investigators in this group have published
together in the past, and the intention of the meetings is eventual development
of a Program or Center grant. The group that meets currently includes two
UTSA Neuroscience labs, one UT Austin lab, and three UTHSCSA labs. In the
current year, the group met twice; in February and September 2013. This year’s
speakers were Dr. Susan Ingram-Osborne (OHSU), sponsored by UTHSCSA,
and Garret Stuber (UNC), sponsored by UTSA Neuroscience.
FALL 2013
FY2012-13 FUNDING
Neurosciences Institute sponsored Awards
* NCE status for 2013
NIH AWARDS
R01NS072458 PI: Gaufo, GO
Morphogen-dependent Regulation of Motor
Neurogenesis along the A/P Axis
R01DA030530 PI: Paladini, Carlos A
The synaptic origin of reward prediction error
signal in dopaminergic neurons
Graduation & Mentoring Data
* R01HD045436 PI: Suter, Kelly J
Control of GnRH Neurons by Excitatory Circuitry
A census of the trainees reported to be working in Neuroscience Institute Labs
during the reporting period (9.1.2012-12.31.2013) is given below.
* R01HD060818 PI: Suter, Kelly J
Pubertal Control of GnRH Neurons
18 undergraduates;
27 MS/PHD students (8 MS, 19 PhD; Programs represented are Biology,
Statistics, Psychology, Chemistry and Computer Science, & Biomedical Eng);
❖ 7 Post doctoral Fellows.
*R03HD060756 PI: Wicha, Nicole Y
Brain Indices of Arithmetic Organization in
Bilinguals
❖
❖
During the reporting period, at least 5 degrees were awarded to
Neurosciences Institute trainees: 3 Bachelor, 8 Master, 4 PhD.
Mentorship activities for PhD students and Post-docs are detailed in item 4
above, and activities aimed at undergraduates are described under Research
Impact: Outreach Activities.
Research Output
From 9.1.2012-8.31.2013:
❖ 17 proposals were submitted to federal agencies (an additional 3 this Dec);
❖ 17 awards (new and continuing) were received by the Institute.
❖ $1,314,924 was the total dollar value of Awards;
❖ $3,206,601.98 in research expenditures were made by the Institute
($3,071,819 from Federal accts)
*Data provided by UTSA VPR
Research Impact
Scholarly Output
Institute faculty generated at least 72 publications from Fall 2012-Fall 2013
(see Investigators in Press). These include peer reviewed journal articles
(63), invited reviews (2), and book chapters (7).
Outreach Activities
Prior to the current year, our major outreach initiatives were our podcast
series and the Annual Distinguished Lecture for the Public. In 2012 and 2013
we extended outreach to include attracting UTSA undergraduates to
Neuroscience and developing knowledge, skills and readiness for those who
wish to pursue further education and/or a career in the field. The resulting
Undergraduate Neurobiology Club (self-titled N.E.U.R.O - Neuroscientists
Evolving Undergraduate Research Opportunities) has been meeting bimonthly
since October 5, 2011. These are new waters for the Institute, and we describe
our approach through the roster of events that we organized in 2012 and 2013:
Faculty “Meet & Greets”. A series of five meetings featured sessions with
UTSA Neurobiology faculty, in which the faculty made informal presentations
about their research, followed by an interactive Q&A with the students. The
presentations were a mix of scientific theory, seated in practical questions, as
well as a techniques oriented discussion of how research questions are
answered in their lab. A total of eight Neurobiology faculty presented to the
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
* U54NS060658 PI: Wilson, Charles J
Quantitative Neurobiology at the University of
Texas San Antonio. Contains 6 components:
Subproject PIs: Gaufo, Ko, Paladini & Witt; 2
subcontract institutions: Medical University of
South Carolina & Geisinger Institute
P50NS047085 Co-PI: Wilson, Charles J
Rhythmicity and Synchrony in the Basal Ganglia
PI: Surmeier, Northwestern University Udall Center
Subcontract.
R01NS072197 PI: Wilson, Charles J
A Tonically Active Network in the Neostriatum
NSF AWARDS
EF 1137897 PI: Santamaria, Fidel
Analyzing Neuronal Activity When Classical
Reaction-Diffusion Breaks Down
* IOS 0951310 PI: Troyer, Todd
Computational Investigation of vocalization in
songbirds.
Under Other Sponsorship:
HRD 0932339 Co-I: Santamaria, Fidel
Center on Simulation,Visualization and Real-Time
Prediction
DMR 0934218 Co-I: Santamaria, Fidel
Oxide and Metal Nanoparticles:The Interface
between Life Sciences and Physical Sciences
IOS 1208029 Co-I: Santamaria, Fidel
US-German Collaboration:The effects of chloride
dynamics in cerebellar computation
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
students, after which a number of students arranged laboratory
visits with individual faculty to learn more about daily laboratory
operations. Currently five of our undergraduates have been
placed in laboratories as volunteers or paid workers as an
outgrowth of this exercise.
Graduate School Application Workshop. Many students expressed
an interest in learning more about the graduate school
application process. To address this, we scheduled to have the
Chair of the Neurobiology Doctoral Studies Committee give a
workshop on the topic, using the UTSA Neurobiology Program
as a model to illustrate many of the important benchmarks that
national graduate programs expect undergraduate applicants to
have met by the time they apply to graduate school. The
workshop was well received, and we expect this to become an
annual event for the group.
PhD Student Panels. With faculty and programmatic mentoring
activities underway, we felt it was important for the
undergraduates to have the opportunity for peer-level mentoring
by becoming familiar with the current crop of Neurobiology PhD
students. The PhD students were highly responsive to this call,
and have become an integral part of the group. Six graduate
students self-organized a roster of informal presentations
focused on the less scientific, more practical aspects of graduate
school, including discussion of their varied backgrounds and
individual journeys that brought them to UTSA.
Advocacy. In candid discussions about the origin of their
interest in the brain, many students disclosed that they have had
first hand experience with mental illness and neurodegenerative
disease through the struggles of loved ones. Based on this shared
vantage point, the group made a collective decision to host a
number of events within the theme of advocacy and awareness
about mental health and neurological disorders. One such event
was held this term, in which the students manned a “Mental
Health Awareness” table on campus announcing who they were
and distributed pamphlets on common mental health issues to
students on campus. The students reported that this was a
BRAIN BOWL
Congratulations to UTSA Seniors Purna Desai, Roberto
Lerma, Alyssa Petko, Angela Vela, and Junior Salina Cram, for
their stellar performance representing UTSA Undergraduate
Neuroscience in the 2013 Intercollegiate Brain Bowl
competition! The team was coached by Prof. Brian Derrick.
FALL 2013
potentially powerful way to recruit new members into the
group, and look forward to hosting this type of event again on a
semesterly basis. Later in the semester, the students selforganized a group for the 2012 Walk to End Alzheimer’s.
Intercollegiate Competition. This year, UTSA returned to
competition in the 2013 Regional Brain Bowl. Brain Bowl
is a longstanding neuroscience-themed quiz bowl sponsored by
the UTHSCSA Center for Biomedical Science, The Mind Science
Foundation and The Society for Neuroscience. This year, UTSA
faced stiff competition from past champion Trinity University, and
UT Arlington. The UTSA team worked with Professor Brian
Derrick for months preparing for competition. Our team
dominated the competition heading into the final challenge
round. They placed a close second to UT Arlington, and Trinity
University placed third.
Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in
Science (SACNAS). Institute Director Dr. Charles Wilson
organized a special minisymposium titled “Advances and
Opportunities In Neuroscience” at the 2013 SACNAS
National Conference, which was held in San Antonio in
October. It brought together a Gary Westbrook (Vollum
Institute), Diane Lipscombe (Brown University),Yarrimar
Carrasquillo (NIH) and Emery Brown (MIT) to present recent
advances in neuroscience, with an emphasis on opportunities for
students entering the field. The group also participated in the
“Conversations with Scientists” forum, at which students and
scientists engaged in informal round-table discussions about
careers in neuroscience. In addition, the Institute sponsored a
booth manned by PhD students Denard Simmons and Jorge
Gomez, and undergraduate Megan Auman, advertising UTSA
Neuroscience to prospective PhDs from around the country.
Collaborations
Our group has a number of well established and productive
collaborations that have been fruitful in the current year (see
item 5, above). These should continue to expand in scope and
number in the years to come. Our view is that UTSA should
continue to build on its existing strength in the study of the
electrical activity and computational function of the nervous
system. Within this area, we would like to ultimately see two or
three strong collaborative research groups emerge.
This year, we have successfully hired new faculty to enhance
our existing research focus on brain mechanisms of reward and
reinforcement learning. The midbrain dopaminergic pathways and
their forebrain targets that are considered key to reinforcement
are also implicated in the neuropathology of Parkinson's disease
and other motor disorders, affective disorders, obsessive
compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and drug addiction. Our
group is engaged in research on dopaminergic mechanisms of
movement and reward, and have already achieved some notable
research successes. In addition, they have established
collaborations with laboratories in Austin, Houston and at
UTHSCSA. They hold a biannual regional meeting on research in
these fields, whose attendance and reputation grows steadily
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
People
New Faculty
Welcome to new Neurobiology faculty Alfonso
Apicella and Matt Wanat. Alfonso hails from the lab of
Gordon MG Shepherd at Yale, and started at UTSA in June.
Matt Wanat, is tying up loose ends in the lab of Paul Phillips at
UW Seattle, and will be arriving in April 2014. Both are
actively developing SNRP projects for submission.
PhD Prog ram News
Congratulations to the 3 Neuro PhD students who
successfully defended their dissertations in 2013: Jossina
Gonzalez, Angie Boley, and Angelique Blackburn.
Angelique is the 57th PhD graduate of our PhD program.
Best wishes to all, and to Michelle Valero, who graduated in
December 2012 and is now a postdoc at Harvard Medical
School.
This year 4 students were recipients of Neuro Institute
Matching-Funds Fellowships: Anand Kulkarni,
Angelique Blackburn, Julie Bland, and Emmanuel
Michaelides. Kudos to Denard Simmons for winning
the best Neuroscience Poster at the COS Research
Conference in October.
Most importantly, the Institute would like to recognize and
laud the students who have taken the initiative to submit NIH
F31 proposals this year: Brigid Sharek, Denard
Simmons, and Soomin Song. This is an important step in
preparation for your scientific career.
FALL 2013
period of their careers by providing support for their NINDS
mission-relevant pilot research, and a structure for scientific
and professional mentorship. The current program met all its
benchmarks to that end; both newly hired faculty that were
part of the current SNRP are now tenured Associate
Professors, each with federal grants and productive research
programs. They have collectively mentored eight PhD students,
four of whom have graduated.
The Institute is currently working with our three most
recently hired junior faculty, Alfonso Apicella, Annie Lin, and
Matt Wanat to develop a new SNRP proposal that will establish
their careers in the same manner that was successful with the
current generation of Neuroscience Associate Professors.
Advisory Board
The Director has met with and reviewed the Institute’s
progress with the Advisory Board annually since 2009. The
Institute’s Annual Business meeting occurs every December;
Institute Investigators, Neurobiology PhD students, the
Advisory Board and Steering Committee convene to review
the institute’s financials, scholarly and outreach activities, and to
laud the scientific accomplishments of all.
Our Advisors are distinguished scientists who have led
nationally ranked neuroscience programs through periods of
expansion:
Dan Johnston PhD
Director, Center for Learning & Memory, Chairman; Section
of Neurobiology, Karl Folkers Chair in Interdisciplinary
Biomedical Research, UT Austin.
James Roberts PhD
Ruth C. & Andrew G. Cowles Professor of Life Sciences,
Trinity University.
Faculty Kudos
Tenure & Promotions
Congratulations to Institute Investigators Fidel
Santamaria and Todd Troyer for being awarded tenure
and promotion to the rank of Associate Professor this year.
Congratulations also to Dean George Perry for being
named to the newly created Patricia and Tom Semmes
Endowed Chair in Neurobiology.
David Weiss PhD
Professor of Physiology & Vice President of Research,
University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio.
Steering Committee
(Texas Dopamine Club, see above). UTSA has established a
reputation in this field that will continue to grow.
Our voting members are Investigators with current federal
funding sponsored by the Institute. Our 2013 Roster: Gary
Gaufo, Carlos Paladini, Fidel Santamaria, Kelly Suter,Todd Troyer,
Nicole Wicha, and Charles Wilson.
The Future
Shared Facilities
Our immediate goal is to renew our current $5.6 million,
multi-component, multi-institution NINDS Specialized
Neuroscience Research Program (SNRP) grant, “Quantitative
Neuroscience at the University of Texas at San Antonio.” The
current program is in its final year, and the timeline for
resubmission is Spring 2014.
The current SNRP was designed to foster the careers of two
new faculty and shepherd them through the early, uncertain
The two instrumentation cores administered by the Institute
are introduced above (Top 5, Item 3). The Optogenetics
Core and 2-Photon Microscopy Core are expressly for
the use of UTSA Neuroscience faculty. They provide
Neuroscience researchers access to high-investment new
technologies, and are expanding the capacities of individual labs.
This year at least two submitted grant proposals had
preliminary data collected via the cores.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
FALL 2013
Investigators in Press
Publications1 9.1.2012 - 12.31.2013
1. Yang Z, Zimmerman S, Brakeman PR, Beaudoin GM 3rd,
Reichardt LF, Marciano DK. De novo lumen formation and
elongation in the developing nephron: a central role for afadin
in apical polarity. Development. 2013 Apr;140(8):1774-84.
2. Coskuner O, Wise-Scira O. Structures and free energy
landscapes of the A53T mutant-type α-synuclein protein and
impact of A53T mutation on the structures of the wild-type
α-synuclein protein with dynamics. ACS Chem Neurosci.
2013 Jul 17;4(7):1101-13.
3. Coskuner O, Wise-Scira O. Arginine and Disordered
Amyloid-β Peptide Structures: Molecular Level Insights into
the Toxicity in Alzheimer's Disease. ACS Chem Neurosci.
2013 Oct 8.
4. Wise-Scira O, Dunn A, Aloglu AK, Sakallioglu IT, Coskuner
O. Structures of theE46K mutant-type α-synuclein protein
and impact of E46K mutation on the structures of the wildtype α-synuclein protein. ACS Chem Neurosci. 2013 Mar
20;4(3):498-508.
5. Wise-Scira O, Aloglu AK, Dunn A, Sakallioglu IT, Coskuner
O. Structures and free energy landscapes of the wild-type
and A30P mutant-type α-synuclein proteins with dynamics.
ACS Chem Neurosci. 2013 Mar 20;4(3):486-97.
6. Gabbard C, Cordova A. Association between imagined and
actual functional reach (FR): a comparison of young and older
adults. Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2013 May-Jun;56(3):487-91.
7. Cordova A, Gabbard C, Caçola P.Visual landmarks and
response delay in estimates of reach. Percept Mot Skills. 2012
Oct;115(2):535-43.
8. Yin Z, Parra-Medina D, Cordova A, He M, Trummer V, Sosa
E, Gallion KJ, Sintes-Yallen A, Huang Y, Wu X, Acosta D, Kibbe
D, Ramirez A. Míranos! Look at us, we are healthy! An
environmental approach to early childhood obesity
prevention. Child Obes. 2012 Oct;8(5):429-39.
9. Gonzalez J, Morales I,Villarreal DM, Derrick BE. Low
frequency stimulation induces long-term depression and
Long-term Potentiation at perforant path-dentate gyrus
synapses in vivo. J. Neurophys. 2013 (in press).
10. Raghunathan R, Mahesula S, Kancharla K, Janardhanan P,
Jadhav YL, Nadeau R,Villa GP, Cook RL, Witt CM, Gelfond JA,
Forsthuber TG, Haskins WE. Anti-CRLF2 AntibodyArmored Biodegradable Nanoparticles for Childhood B-ALL.
Part Part Syst Charact. 2013 Apr;30(4):355-364.
11. Chellappa ST, Maredia R, Phipps K, Haskins WE, Weitao T.
Motility of Pseudomonas aeruginosa contributes to SOSinducible biofilm formation. Res Microbiol. 2013 Oct 11.
12. Nagore LI, Nadeau RJ, Guo Q, Jadhav YL, Jarrett HW,
Haskins WE. Purification and characterization of
transcription factors. Mass Spectrom Rev. 2013 Sep-Oct;32
(5):386-98.
13. Raphael I, Mahesula S, Kalsaria K, Kotagiri V, Purkar AB,
Anjanappa M, Shah D, Pericherla V, Jadhav YL, Raghunathan R,
Vaynberg M, Noriega D, Grimaldo NH, Wenk C, Gelfond JA,
Forsthuber TG, Haskins WE. Microwave and magnetic (M
1 Citations
(2) ) proteomics of the experimental autoimmune
encephalomyelitis animal model of multiple sclerosis.
Electrophoresis. 2012 Dec;33(24):3810-9.
14. Mahesula S, Raphael I, Raghunathan R, Kalsaria K, Kotagiri V,
Purkar AB, Anjanappa M, Shah D, Pericherla V, Jadhav YL,
Gelfond JA, Forsthuber TG, Haskins WE.
Immunoenrichment microwave and magnetic proteomics for
quantifying CD47 in the experimental autoimmune
encephalomyelitis model of multiple sclerosis.
Electrophoresis. 2012 Dec;33(24):3820-9.
15. Haskins WE, Zablotsky BL, Foret MR, Ihrie RA, AlvarezBuylla A, Eisenman RN, Berger MS, Lin CH. Molecular
Characteristics in MRI-Classified Group 1 Glioblastoma
Multiforme. Front Oncol. 2013 Jul 11;3:182.
16. Ko D, Wilson CJ, Paladini CA. Detection of Bursts and
Pauses in Spike Trains. J Neurosci Methods. 2012 October
15; 211(1): 145–158.
17. Branch SY, Goertz RB, Sharpe AL, Pierce J, Roy S, Ko D,
Paladini CA, Beckstead MJ. Food restriction increases
glutamate receptor-mediated burst firing of dopamine
neurons. J Neurosci. 2013 Aug 21;33(34):13861-72.
18. Bharadwaj PR, Bates KA, Porter T, Teimouri E, Perry G,
Steele JW, Gandy S,Groth D, Martins RN,Verdile G.
Latrepirdine: molecular mechanisms underlying potential
therapeutic roles in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative
diseases. Transl Psychiatry. 2013 Dec 3;3:e332.
19. Fujioka H, Phelix CF, Friedland RP, Zhu X, Perry EA, Castellani
RJ, Perry G. Apolipoprotein E4 Prevents Growth of Malaria
at the Intraerythrocyte Stage:Implications For Differences in
Racial Susceptibility to Alzheimer's Disease. J Health Care
Poor Underserved. 2013 Nov;24(4 Suppl):70-8.
20. Jarero-Basulto JJ, Luna-Muñoz J, Mena R, Kristofikova Z,
Ripova D, Perry G, Binder LI, Garcia-Sierra F. Proteolytic
cleavage of polymeric tau protein by caspase-3: implications
for Alzheimer disease. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 2013 Dec;
72(12):1145-61.
21. Wang X, Wang W, Li L, Perry G, Lee HG, Zhu X. Oxidative
stress and mitochondrial dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease.
Biochim Biophys Acta. 2013 Nov 1.
22. Williams WM, Torres S, Siedlak SL, Castellani RJ, Perry G,
Smith MA, Zhu X. Antimicrobial peptide beta-defensin-1
expression is upregulated in Alzheimer's brain. J
Neuroinflammation. 2013 Oct 18;10(1):127.
23. Paley EL, Perry G, Sokolova O. Tryptamine induces
axonopathy and mitochondriopathy mimicking
neurodegenerative diseases via tryptophanyl-tRNA
deficiency. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2013 Nov;10(9):987-1004.
PubMed PMID: 24117115.
24. Correia SC, Perry G, Castellani R, Moreira PI. Is exercise-ina-bottle likely to proffer new insights into Alzheimer's
disease? J Neurochem. 2013 Oct;127(1):4-6.
25. 8: Mondragón-Rodríguez S, Perry G, Luna-Muñoz J,
Acevedo-Aquino M, Williams S. Phosphorylation of tau
presented alphabetically by Institute Investigator.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
protein at sites Ser(396-404) is one of the earliest events in
Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome. Neuropathol Appl
Neurobiol. 2013 Aug 23.
26. Mondragón-Rodríguez S, Perry G, Zhu X, Moreira PI,
Acevedo-Aquino MC, Williams S. Phosphorylation of tau
protein as the link between oxidative stress, mitochondrial
dysfunction, and connectivity failure: implications for
Alzheimer's disease. Oxid Med Cell Longev.
2013;2013:940603.
27. Bonda DJ, Stone JG, Torres SL, Siedlak SL, Perry G, Kryscio
R, Jicha G, Casadesus G, Smith MA, Zhu X, Lee HG.
Dysregulation of leptin signaling in Alzheimer disease:
evidence for neuronal leptin resistance. J Neurochem. 2013
Jul 29.
28. Colom LV, Perry G, Kuljis RO. Tackling the elusive challenges
relevant to conquering the 100-plus year old problem of
Alzheimer's disease. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2013 Jan;10(1):
108-16. Review.
29. Haldar S, Beveridge 'J, Wong J, Singh A, Galimberti D, Borroni
B, Zhu X, Blevins J, Greenlee J, Perry G, Mukhopadhyay CK,
Schmotzer C, Singh N. A low-molecular-weight ferroxidase is
increased in the CSF of sCJD cases: CSF ferroxidase and
transferrin as diagnostic biomarkers for sCJD. Antioxid Redox
Signal. 2013 Nov 10;19(14):1662-75.
30. Perry G, Zhu X, Smith MA, Sorensen A, Avila J. Preface.
Alzheimer's disease: advances for a new century. J
Alzheimers Dis. 2013;33 Suppl 1:S1.
31. Zivković L, Spremo-Potparević B, Siedlak SL, Perry G,
Plećaš-Solarović B, Milićević Z, Bajić VP. DNA damage in
Alzheimer disease lymphocytes and its relation to premature
centromere division. Neurodegener Dis. 2013;12(3):156-63.
32. Coskuner O, Wise-Scira O, Perry G, Kitahara T. The
structures of the E22Δ mutant-type amyloid-β alloforms and
the impact of E22Δ mutation on the structures of the wildtype amyloid-β alloforms. ACS Chem Neurosci. 2013 Feb
20;4(2):310-20.
33. ED, Elorza B, Perez-Córdova MG, Pacheco-Otalora LF,
Touhami A, Paulson P, Perry G, Murray IV, Colom LV.
Amyloid β peptides modify the expression of antioxidant
repair enzymes and a potassium channel in the
septohippocampal system. Neurobiol Aging. 2013 Aug;34(8):
2071-6.
34. Perry EA, Castellani RJ, Moreira PI, Nunomura A, Lui Q,
Harris PL, Sayre LM, Szweda PA, Szweda LI, Zhu X, Smith MA,
Perry G. Neurofilaments are the major neuronal target of
FALL 2013
hydroxynonenal-mediated protein cross-links. Free Radic
Res. 2013 Jul;47(6-7):507-10.
35. Hou L, Lee HG, Han F, Tedesco JM, Perry G, Smith MA,
Zagorski MG. Modification of amyloid-β1-42 fibril structure
by methionine-35 oxidation. J Alzheimers Dis. 2013 Jan 1;37
(1):9-18.
36. García-Escudero V, Martín-Maestro P, Perry G, Avila J.
Deconstructing mitochondrial dysfunction in Alzheimer
disease. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2013;2013:162152.
37. Schrag M, Mueller C, Zabel M, Crofton A, Kirsch WM, Ghribi
O, Squitti R, Perry G. Oxidative stress in blood in
Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment: a metaanalysis. Neurobiol Dis. 2013 Nov;59:100-10.
38. Santos RX, Correia SC, Zhu X, Smith MA, Moreira PI,
Castellani RJ, Nunomura A, Perry G. Mitochondrial DNA
oxidative damage and repair in aging and Alzheimer's disease.
Antioxid Redox Signal. 2013 Jun 20;18(18):2444-57.
39. Correia SC, Santos RX, Santos MS, Casadesus G, Lamanna
JC, Perry G, Smith MA, Moreira PI. Mitochondrial
abnormalities in a streptozotocin-induced rat model of
sporadic Alzheimer's disease. Curr Alzheimer Res. 2013 May
1;10(4):406-19.
40. Zhu X, Perry G, Smith MA, Wang X. Abnormal
mitochondrial dynamics in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's
disease. J Alzheimers Dis. 2013;33 Suppl 1:S253-62.
41. Katti S, Lokhande N, González D, Cassill A, Renthal R.
Quantitative analysis of pheromone-binding protein
specificity. Insect Mol Biol. 2013 Feb;22(1):31-40.
42. Cockfield J, Su K, Robbins KA. MOBBED: a computational
data infrastructure for handling large collections of event-rich
time series datasets in MATLAB. Front Neuroinform. 2013
Oct 10;7:20.
43. Lawhern V, Kerick S, Robbins KA. Detecting alpha spindle
events in EEG time series using adaptive autoregressive
models. BMC Neurosci. 2013 Sep 18;14:101.
44. Lawhern V, Hairston WD, Robbins K. DETECT: a MATLAB
toolbox for event detection and identification in time series,
with applications to artifact detection in EEG signals. PLoS
One. 2013 Apr 24;8(4):e62944.
45. Smallwood RF, Laird AR, Ramage AE, Parkinson AL, Lewis J,
Clauw DJ, Williams DA, Schmidt-Wilcke T, Farrell MJ, Eickhoff
SB, Robin DA. Structural brain anomalies and chronic pain:
a quantitative meta-analysis of gray matter volume. J Pain.
2013 Jul;14(7):663-75.
Symposium 2012
1 Citations
presented alphabetically by Institute Investigator.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5
46. Parkinson AL, Korzyukov O, Larson CR, Litvak V, Robin DA.
Modulation of effective connectivity during vocalization with
perturbed auditory feedback. Neuropsychologia. 2013 Jul;51
(8):1471-80.
47. Marinov T, Rodriguez N, Santamaria F. Fractional
Integration Toolbox. Journal of Fractional Calculus and
Analysis. 2013 Vol 16(3).
48. Marinov T and Santamaria F. Computational modeling of
diffusion in the cerebellum. Computational Molecular
Neuroscience, Blackwell Ed. Elsevier. in press. Book Chapter)
49. Santamaria F. (201) Cerebellum: Overview. Encyclopedia
of Computational Neuroscience. Jung and Jaeger Eds.
Springer. (Book Chapter)
50. Marinov T and Santamaria F. (2013) Diffusion Equation.
Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Jung and
Jaeger Eds. Springer. (Book Chapter)
51. Michaeilides E and Santamaria F. (2013). Multi-Scale
Modeling of Purkinje Cells. Encyclopedia of Computational
Neuroscience. Jung and Jaeger Eds. Springer. (Book Chapter)
52. Deans H and Santamaria F. (2013). Modeling ion
concentrations. Encyclopedia of Computational
Neuroscience. Jung and Jaeger Eds. Springer. (Book Chapter)
53. Norberg R, Campbell R, Suter KJ. Ion channels and
information processing in GnRH neuron dendrites. Channels
(Austin). 2013 May-Jun;7(3):135-45.
54. Hemond PJ, O'Boyle MP, Hemond Z, Gay VL, Suter K 2013
Changes in dendritic architecture: not your "usual suspect" in
FALL 2013
control of the onset of puberty in male rats. Front
Endocrinol (Lausanne) 4:78. (Book Chapter)
55. Boothe DL, Cohen AH, Troyer TW. Phase locking
asymmetries at flexor-extensor transitions during fictive
locomotion. PLoS One. 2013 May 21;8(5):e64421.
56. Troyer TW. Neuroscience: The units of a song. Nature.
2013 Mar 7;495(7439):56-7. (Review)
57. Glaze CM, Troyer TW. Development of temporal
structure in zebra finch song. J Neurophysiol. 2013 Feb;109
(4):1025-35.
58. Wanat MJ, Bonci A, Phillips PE. CRF acts in the midbrain to
attenuate accumbens dopamine release to rewards but not
their predictors. Nat Neurosci. 2013 Apr;16(4):383-5.
59. Hollon NG, Soden ME, Wanat MJ. Dopaminergic
prediction errors persevere in thenucleus accumbens core
during negative reinforcement. J Neurosci. 2013 Feb 20;33(8):
3253-5.
60. Quintana A, Sanz E, Wang W, Storey GP, Güler AD, Wanat
MJ, Roller BA, La Torre Amieux PS, McKnight GS, Bamford
NS, Palmiter RD. Lack of GPR88 enhances medium spiny
neuron activity and alters motor- and cue-dependent
behaviors. Nat Neurosci. 2012 Nov;15(11):1547-55.
61. Lemos JC, Wanat MJ, Smith JS, Reyes BA, Hollon NG,Van
Bockstaele EJ, Chavkin C, Phillips PE. Severe stress switches
CRF action in the nucleus accumbens from appetitive to
aversive. Nature. 2012 Oct 18;490(7420):402-6.
62. Wilson CJ. Active decorrelation in the basal ganglia.
Neuroscience. 2013 Oct 10;250:467-82.
63. Dodla R, Wilson CJ. Interaction function of oscillating
coupled neurons. Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys.
2013 Oct;88(4 Pt 1):042704.
64. Dodla R, Wilson CJ. Effect of phase response curve
skewness on synchronization of electrically coupled neuronal
oscillators. Neural Comput. 2013 Oct;25(10):2545-610.
65. Dodla R, Wilson CJ. Spike width and frequency alter
stability of phase-locking in electrically coupled neurons. Biol
Cybern. 2013 Jun;107(3):367-83.
66. Dodla R, Wilson CJ. Effect of sharp jumps at the edges of
phase response curves on synchronization of electrically
coupled neuronal oscillators. PLoS One. 2013;8(3):e58922.
67. Deister CA, Dodla R, Barraza D, Kita H, Wilson CJ. Firing
rate and pattern heterogeneity in the globus pallidus arise
from a single neuronal population. J Neurophysiol. 2013 Jan;
109(2):497-506.
68. Farries MA, Wilson CJ. Biophysical basis of the phase
response curve of subthalamic neurons with generalization to
other cell types. J Neurophysiol. 2012 Oct;108(7):1838-55.
69. Farries MA, Wilson CJ. Phase response curves of
subthalamic neurons measured with synaptic input and
current injection. J Neurophysiol. 2012 Oct;108(7):1822-37.
SACNAS 2013
Students man the UTSA Neurosciences Institute Booth at
SACNAS 2013 in San Antonio, October 3-6. From left,
Undergraduate Megan Auman, PhD student Denard
Simmons, and PhD student Jorge Gomez.
1 Citations
70. Ng S, Wicha NY. Meaning first: a case for languageindependent access to word meaning in the bilingual brain.
Neuropsychologia. 2013 Apr;51(5):850-63.
71. Ceballos NA, Giuliano RJ, Wicha NY, Graham R. Acute
stress and event-related potential correlates of attention to
alcohol images in social drinkers. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2012
Sep;73(5):761-71.
presented alphabetically by Institute Investigator.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5: APPENDIX FALL 2013
Institute Investigators & Affiliations
Faculty
College
Neurosciences Institute Sponsored Grants 2012-13
Department
PI
Alfonso Apicella
Science
Biology
Alberto Cordova
Education
Health & Kinesiology
Gaufo
Orkid Coskuner
Science
Chemistry
Ko
Thomas Coyle
COLFA
Psychology
Brian Derrick
Science
Biology
Gary Gaufo
Science
Biology
William Haskins
Science
Chemistry
David Jaffe
Science
Biology
Daijin Ko
Business
Statistics
Suter
Annie Lin
Science
Biology
Deborah Mangold
COLFA
Psychology
Carlos Paladini
Science
Biology
Troyer
Wicha
George Perry
Science
Biology
Rama Ratnam
Science
Biology
Robert Renthal
Science
Biology
Kay Robbins
Science
Computer Science
Donald A. Robin
Honors
Honors
Fidel Santamaria
Science
Biology
David Senseman
Science
Biology
Kelly Suter
Science
Biology
Todd Troyer
Science
Biology
Matt Wanat (2014)
Science
Biology
Nicole Wicha
Science
Biology
Charles Wilson
Science
Biology
Colleen Witt
Science
Physics
Post-doc Fellows*
Paladini
Santamaria
Wilson
Witt
4
Paladini
Ramana Dodla
Wilson
Michael Farries (now @ U Mich)
Wilson
Songquing Lu
Santamaria
Toma Marinov
Santamaria
Wondimu Teka
Santamaria
1
0
2010
2011
9
2012
2010
2011
3.07
1.03
2008
2009
3.59
3
17 17
$ millions
# of proposals
5
2.78
2012
2013
4
20
11
2.71
Institute Expenditures since inception, in $millions. Dollar
amounts indicate expenses from federal grant accounts (Source, UTSA
VPR/Grants & Accounting).
Submission/Award Data FY2010-13
10
2.51
2
Shukhan Ng
Wicha
*Postdocs who meet the qualifications to be Institute
Investigators are listed. All members must have published a
neuroscience research paper in the last 2 years.
15
3.54
3
$ millions
Gerard Beaudoin III
16 17
Current
X
E
E
X
–
E
X
E
E
E
E
X
E
X
E
Fiscal Snapshot All Years
Lab
19
2012
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X denotes that a grant was active for the listed year.
– denotes that a grant lapsed in the listed year.
E denotes grants in extension
Joseph Beatty (now @ Mich State) Wilson
15
Grant
NIH 5R01NS072458
NIH 5U54NS060658 Project 1
NIH 5U54NS060658 core B
NIH 5R01DA030530
NIH 5R01MH079276
NIH 5U54NS060658 Project 2
NSF EF 1137897
NIH 5R01HD045436
NIH 5R01HD060818
NSF IOS 951310
NIH 5R03HD060756
NIH 5R01NS072197
NIH 5U54NS060658
NIH 5P50NS047085
NIH 5U54NS060658 Core A
2
1
1.31
2013
# of Submitted and Awarded Grant Proposals
2010-13. Submissions (blue) have decreased as Awards
(purple; new, continuing, revisions, supplements and extensions)
have increased. Awards follow submissions by one fiscal cycle
(Source,VPR).
3.58
2.99
0
2010
2011
2012
2013
Institute award income 2010-13, in $millions. Dollar
amounts indicate total costs awarded to UTSA (Source,VPR).
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu
ANNUAL REPORT Nº5: APPENDIX Workshops 2008-2013 (academic year)
Year
2008
FALL 2013
Distinguished Public Lectures 2008-2013
Year
Title
The R Statistical Language for Biologists
Christof Koch PhD, Professor of Computation and Neural
Systems, California Institute of Technology
The Neurobiology of Consciousness: What do we know and how
can we find out more? 05.05.09
2010
Nancy Wexler, PhD, Director, Hereditary Disease Foundation;
Professor of Neurology & Neuropsychology, Columbia University
Expansions on a Dream: From cause to cure of Huntington’s
Disease. 11.11.09
2010*
Alice Wexler PhD, Research Scholar, UCLA
Stigma, Secrecy & Medical History: What we can learn from
Huntington’s Disease. 11.10.09
2011
Anne Young MD PhD, Julieanne Dorn Professor, Harvard Med
Huntington’s Disease: From Gene to Therapy 03.24.11
2012
Erich Jarvis PhD, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, Duke
University Medical Center, Investigator, HHMI
Learned Birdsong & the Neurobiology of Human Language
04.24.12
Image Deconvolution and Analysis
2009
Neurostatistics: Experimental Design & ANOVA
for Biologists
Data Mining in Three Dimensions
2010
Neurostatistics: Statistical Models for
Counting Data & The Bootstrapping Method
Analyzing Neurons in 4 Dimensions
2011
Neurostatistics: Statistics in Neuroscience & Data
Mining
Analyzing Cell Morphology &
Movement Morphology & Movement in 3
Dimensions
2012
Title
2009
An Introduction to Robust Statistics and R for
Biologists
Zeiss Workshop
* Companion lecture, partnered by American Studies Program
Symposia 2008-2013
2013 NTS PODCASTS
* to be posted, pending approval
Year
Title
2009
Ion Channels & Firing Properties of Dopamine
Neurons, panelists: Bruce Bean (Harvard); Jim
Surmeier (Northwestern); John Williams (Oregon
Health Sci U); Joachim Roeper (Goethe U,
Frankfurt), Carlos Paladini (UTSA)
2010
Wiring the CNS from Brain to Spinal Cord,
panelists: Pasko Rakic (Yale), Jeremy Dasen
(NYU), Goichi Miyaki (NYU), Raj Awatramani
(Northwestern), Gary Gaufo (UTSA)
2011
The Bilingual Brain, panelists: Judith Kroll (Penn
State), Lee Osterhout (UW Seattle), Karen
Emmorey (SD State), Nicole Wicha (UTSA)
2012
Neural Dynamics & Coding, panelists: Eugene
Izhikevich (BrainCorp/Scholarpedia), Eric SheaBrown (UW Seattle), Adrienne Fairhall (UW
Seattle), Uri Eden (Boston U), Todd Troyer (UTSA)
2013
Power Law Dynamics in the Brain, panelists:
Larry Abbot (Columbia), John Beggs (U of Indiana)
Dietmar Plenz (NIMH), Fidel Santamaria (UTSA)
PhD graduations Fall 2012-Fall 2013
Year
Student
Mentor
2012
Michelle Valero
Rama Ratnam
2013
Angela Boley
Edwin Barea-Rodriguez
2013
Jossina Gonzalez
Brian Derrick
2013
Angelique Blackburn Nicole Wicha
William Armstrong (U of Tennessee)
Jokubas Ziburkus (U of Houston)
#94 Barbara Finlay (Cornell)
#95 Julie Kauer (Brown)
#96 Russell Poldrack (UT Austin)
#97 Gordon M. Shepherd (Yale)
#98 Charles Lee Cox (U of Illinois U-C)
#99 Samuel Pfaff (HHMI, Salk)
#100 Daniel Ansari (U of Western Ontario)
#101 Cameron McIntyre (Case Western)
#102 Eric Fortune (NJIT)
#103 Aniruddh Patel (Tufts)
#104 Ellen Lau (U of Maryland)*
#105 Lena Ting (Emory & Georgia Tech)*
#106 Louis Reichardt (UCSF, Simons Foundation)*
#107 Power Law Dynamics Symposium*
#92
#93
featuring: Larry Abbot (Columbia)
John Beggs (U of Indiana)
Dietmar Plenz (NIMH)
Fidel Santamaria (UTSA)
Main Site:
http://snrp.utsa.edu/Podcast/Podcast.html
iTunes Preview:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/neuroscientists-talk-shop/id279181187
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO NEUROSCIENCES INSTITUTE
http://neuroscience.utsa.edu