Kyle Smith, Ph.D.
Kyle holds a B.A. in Psychology (and a certificate in Business Management!) from Indiana University, and an M.S., and Ph.D. in Psychology (Biopsychology) from The University of Michigan. His doctoral research was conducted with Dr. Kent Berridge (lab), as well as with Dr. J. Wayne Aldridge. He conducted his postdoctoral research with Dr. Ann Graybiel (lab) at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at M.I.T.
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
Elizabeth Bien, Ph.D. Elizabeth graduated in 2014 from Binghamton University with a B.S. in Integrated Molecular Neuroscience and a minor in Chinese language. She studied the role that natural variations of maternal care played on female offspring behavior and on alcohol abuse. From 2014-2016, she worked in the Advanced Tissue Resource Core as a research technician at Massachusetts General Hospital with Charles Vanderburg where she studied neurodegenerative diseases. From 2016-2018, she worked as a research assistant in Steve McCarroll’s lab at Harvard Medical School where she used Drop-Seq to help confirm the existence of novel cell types in mice and evolutionary changes in cell types. She received her Ph.D. from Dartmouth in 2025. Her current research interest focuses on motivation and behavioral flexibility.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Stuti Agrawal, B.S. Stuti graduated in 2021 from the University of California Irvine (UCI) with a B.S. in Neurobiology and a minor in Business Management. While at UCI, she studied how different cardiac arrest etiologies lead to differences in peripheral perfusion and neurological outcome post-resuscitation in the lab of Dr. Yama Akbari, as well as the anterior cingulate cortex’s role in reward-seeking and effortful decision-making in the lab of Dr. Sean Ostlund. Her current research interests focus on characterizing the function of the nucleus accumbens – ventral pallidum pathway in regulating social and nonsocial motivation.
UNDERGRADUATES
Taanvi Gawdar
Elsa Coulam
Tiana Duong
Thomas Hohmann
ALUMNI
Erica Townsend, Ph.D. – graduate student
John Cavanaugh, Ph.D. – Postdoctoral fellow
Silvia V. Navarro, Ph.D. – Postdoctoral Fellow
Kenny Amaya, Ph.D. – Graduate Student
Elizabeth Smedley, Ph.D. – Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Fellow
Jeffrey Stott, Ph.D. – Postdoctoral Fellow
Adam Crego, Ph.D. – Graduate Student
Steve Chang, Ph.D. – Postdoctoral Fellow
Kate Stansfield – research assistant and lab manager
Alyssa DiLeo – research assistant and lab manager
Alex Brown – research assistant and lab manager
Mugisha Nitunga – research assistant and lab manager
Constance Tazelaar – research assistant and lab manager
Marco Liera – research assistant and lab manager