
Adam Gordon-Fennell
Adam Gordon-Fennell received his Bachelors of Science in Psychology from the University of California Davis. Following graduation, he continued to work at UC Davis as a Junior Specialist in Dr. Leah Krubitzer’s evolutionary neurobiology lab where he studied the role of the posterior parietal lobe in reaching and grasping behaviors, and shaping of sensory responses of somatosensory cortex. He then obtained a PhD in micky marinelli’s lab, at the University of Texas in Austin, where he studied the role of the lateral preoptic area in reward and aversion, and in modulating the activity of midbrain neurons. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Garret Stuber’s lab at the University of Washington, where he is studying signaling dynamics of sub-populations of neurons in the lateral hypothalamus during rewarding and aversive events. http://www.stuberlab.org/members

Lydia Gordon-Fennell
Lydia obtained her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Texas in Austin and continued-on to work in micky marinelli’s lab as a research assistant. Lydia’s examined the role of the lateral preoptic area in motivated behavior. She also co-created a new method to quantify manipulations in the rat brain (e.g. spread of viral infusions, lesions, etc…). Lydia entered the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at the University of Washington and is currently a graduate student in Paul Phillips’s lab.

Crystal Lemchi
Crystal graduated from Texas State University-San Marcos with a BA in psychology. Soon after, Crystal joined micky marinelli’s lab as a research assistant, where she tested age and sex differences in addiction liability. Crystal then joined the STEM program at the University of Pennsylvania, working in Julie Blendy’s lab and is now a graduate student at the University of Michigan.

Anna Mutti
Anna was a visiting Master’s student in micky marinelli’s lab, where she studies the effects of punishment as a deterrent for reward taking in adolescent vs. adult rats. Anna found that adolescents are resistant to suppressing reward taking after punishment and that this depends on their inability to suppress the activity of dopamine neurons during punishment. Anna is currently a graduate student in Christoph Schwarzer’s lab, at Medizinische Universität at Innsbruck.

Kevin Sattler
Kevin earned his B.A. in Philosophy with a minor in Religious Studies from Arkansas State University. After working for several years, he gained a passion for the sciences which led him to the University of Texas at Austin. While working on a B.S. in Neuroscience at UT, Kevin volunteered as an undergraduate research assistant in the Michel Drew lab. He helped with work in the Drew lab that studies how fear memories are both stored and recalled. Using optogenetics it has been shown that fear acquisition cells can be suppressed and fear extinction cells can be stimulated to erase a phenomenon common in conditioning experiments called spontaneous recovery. Upon graduating, Kevin began working in the Marinelli lab as a research assistant, and plans on attending graduate school for Neuroscience in the future with an emphasis on mental health related illnesses. Kevin is now a graduate student in Moriel Zelikowsky’s lab, at the University of Utah.

Lauren Smith
Lauren Smith joined the Marinelli laboratory as a post-doctoral researcher in September 2020. She was funded by an Alcohol Research Center training grant.