The Brain Institute has recruited four highly talented young investigators with home departments in Psychology, Bioengineering, and Neurobiology:

Marc Coutanche, PhD, has joined the Department of Psychology as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Coutanche earned a PhD in psychology under the advisement of Sharon Thompson-Schill, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University with Martin Chun, PhD. Using functional neuroimaging and cutting-edge data analysis methods, Dr. Coutanche investigates how connections form within our memory networks, at the cognitive and neural levels. He has an extensive publication list, including in high-impact journals including NeuroImage and Cerebral Cortex.  Dr. Coutanche has also been the recipient of multiple honors, including the American Psychological Foundation F.J. McGuigan Dissertation Award.

Christopher Donnelly, PhD, is the first recruit for the new Live Like Lou Center for ALS Research.  He has joined the Department of Neurobiology to conduct fundamental research to reveal the etiology and pathophysiological mechanisms of action of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Dr. Donnelly was a postdoctoral fellow with world-renowned ALS expert Jeffrey Rothstein, MD, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University, where he used a variety of approaches to reveal the molecular mechanisms that underlie neural injury in ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Specifically, Dr. Donnelly generated neurons from the skin cells of patients who carry a C90RF72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion, the most common genetic cause of familial and sporadic ALS and FTD. Generation of these neurons enabled studies of the toxic mechanism behind this mutation and, in collaboration with industry, targeted the toxic product of this mutation to restore neural health. Dr. Donnelly’s studies helped in moving these therapeutics into the clinical trial pipeline. More recently, Dr. Donnelly and his collaborators identified a pathogenic mechanism that seemingly affects the majority of ALS patients and might explain a universal pathology observed in the disease. A PhD in molecular biology and genetics from the University of Delaware/Alfred I. Dupont Hospital for Children, Dr. Donnelly was mentored by Jeffery Twiss, MD, PhD, and studied the role of mRNA transport and localized translation in determining axonal growth programs and axon regeneration following injury. Dr. Donnelly has published a number of high-profile papers in Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and Neuron, and has received notable honors and awards, including the Target ALS Springboard Fellowship and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation Outstanding Young Investigator Award.

Takshi (“TK”) Kozai, PhD, has joined the Department of Bioengineering as an Assistant Professor.  Dr. Kozai worked in the Neural Engineering Laboratory at the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Daryl Kipke, PhD, and received his doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from Michigan in 2011.  Prior to that, he worked in the laboratory of Michael Stowell, PhD, at the University of Colorado, where he gained the fundamental knowledge and experiences in the areas of intelligent bio-design, bio-templating, and bio-mimicry.  Dr. Kozai’s research focuses on elucidating biological tissue responses to implantable technologies, especially in the cortex.   His research employs in vivo multi-photon microscopy, functionally evoked electrophysiology, post-mortem multi-channel immunohistochemistry, impedance spectroscopy, device design, and emerging biomaterial tools.  Dr. Kozai’s biomaterials-related experience and knowledge of biology enabled him to invent several devices that have led to two awarded patents, three pending patents, a start-up company, and several high-impact scientific publications, including Nature Materials.

William Stauffer, PhD, has returned to Pitt from the University of Cambridge to become an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology.  Dr. Stauffer received a BS in neuroscience (2003) and a PhD in bioengineering / CNBC (2009) from the University of Pittsburgh.  As a graduate student, he was mentored byTracy Cui, PhD, Director of the Neural Tissue/Electrode Interface and Neural Tissue Engineering Lab, and developed a novel experimental technique to transiently silence specific nodes in biological neural networks.  He then used this technique to investigate how biologically-based neural networks process and transform inputs.  Near the end of his graduate training, Dr. Stauffer was an NSF Research Fellow with Rob Kass, PhD, at Carnegie Mellon University, and investigated statistical models of correlation inside biological neural networks.  In addition, during his graduate training Dr. Stauffer developed novel electrode coatings that promoted cell-type specific neuronal attachment and growth. Since 2009, he had been a postdoctoral research associate with Wolfram Schultz, Fellow of the Royal Society, at the University of Cambridge.  In Schultz's lab, he used neuron recording in the basal ganglia to investigate formal models of decision making in awake, trained rhesus macaques.  Most recently, Dr. Stauffer led a project to develop cell type-specific optogenetic control of dopamine neurons in behaving monkeys. At Pitt, the Stauffer lab will continue to develop molecular and viral tools for cell type-specific gene expression.  He plans to use these tools in non-human primates to: 1) modulate the activity of specific cell types to reveal their role in normal and abnormal behavior; and 2) define the multi-synaptic connectivity of specific cell types.