About
Research Description:
How do neurons communicate with each other?
The overarching hypothesis for the Kramer Lab is that axons have an active and unexplored role in neurotransmission. Axons can compute information and generate output that contributes to behavior and the etiology of neurological diseases, much like the somatodendritic compartment. We aim to study foundational mechanisms of neuronal signaling and physiology, and use that to better understand the brain and its diseases.
Biography:
I first became interested in Biology in high school, when I saw a plant cell under the microscope opening and closing its stomata. I attended Grinnell College in the Iowa corn fields for my undergraduate education. There my sparked interest in Biology was narrowed into understanding how the brain works. I was among the first graudates to complete the new Concentration in Neuroscience, with a major in Psychology, in 2009.
I decided then that I wanted to better understand how neurons work through studying the mechanisms that control their electrical signaling. I therefore chose to do my graduate training at The Vollum Institute at Oregon Health and Science University (Portland, Oregon). There I worked under the mentorship of Dr. John Williams to study metabotropic glutamate receptor signaling in dopaminergic neurons of the ventral midbrain, and how this signaling is altered following even a single administration of cocaine. In 2016 I defended my thesis, and I moved back across the country to start a post-doctoral fellowship at the NIH.
I did my post-doctoral training with Dr. Zayd Khaliq, where I studied the physiology of dopaminergic axons. The axon is an extremely difficult compartment of the neuron to study due to its small size. We were able to record direct electrophysiological signals from dopaminergic axons, and learned that these axons receive surprisingly synaptic-like inputs that can be summated into action potentials to release dopamine. This work was extremely exciting and has propelled my current interest in starting my own lab. Now at the University of Michign as an Assistant Professor I will study these tiny but interesting axons but I will do so in the brain's reward circuitry in order to gain new insights into how drugs of abuse alter the physiology and function of neurons.
Educational Philosophy:
Anyone can be a scientist who is driven by an intrinsic motivation to understand how something works. My job as an educator is to give students the foundation of knowledge necessary to generate spontaneous sparks of insight that ignite that intrinsic academic drive. My job as a scientist and lab leader is to provide the tools necessary so that trainees in my lab can pursue our shared resarch interests.
Research Opportunities:
I have funding for:
- post-doctoral researcher
- lab technician
- graduate student
