News

Monique was selected by the Society for Neuroscience's Professional Development Committee and its Diversity in Neuroscience Subcommittee as a Neuroscience Scholars Program Fellow. This program is designed to provide underrepresented graduate students in neuroscience with career development and networking opportunities to help them with success going into the future.

The program provides the following benefits:

• A mentoring team consisting of a senior mentor and a member of the Diversity in Neuroscience Subcommittee. The team will discuss a fellow's research, career plans, and overall experience.
• Two years of complimentary SfN membership.
• A travel award to attend the SfN annual meeting each fall during the two-year program.
• Up to $1500 in enrichment funds to support allowed professional development activities.

Congratulations Monique!

Monique and Patricia Sunwoo

July 12th, the Brighton Symphony Orchestra, including Neuroscience Graduate Student Monique Mendes, performed with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra at the Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. The RPO held Summer Side by Side Sessions where amateur musicians rehearsed with professionals. Monique's stand partner was Patricia Sunwoo, a critically acclaimed violinist who joined the RPO in 2003.

The rehearsal included: Rimsky-Korsakov - Mlada: Processioin of the Nobles, Dvorak - Symphony No. 9, "New World" (2nd and 4th movements), and Williams - Raiders of the Lost Ark: Raider's March.

Brighton Symphony Orchestra members and RPO Side by side guest conductor (to the right

Rianne Stowell, a fourth year NGP graduate student, has been awarded a two year NIH Fellowship award (F31) for her project titled, "Noradrenergic modulation of microglial dynamics and synaptic plasticity". Rianne works in the laboratory of Ania Majewska, Ph.D.

The purpose of the Kirschstein National Research Service Award program is to enable promising predoctoral students with potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientists, to obtain mentored research training while conducting dissertation research.

Well done Rianne!

Monique S. Mendes, a neuroscience Ph.D. student, is the first University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) graduate student to receive a prestigious diversity award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders in Stroke (NINDS). Mendes works in the laboratory of Ania Majewska, Ph.D. and studies the role that the brain's immune cells play in development, learning, and diseases like Autism.

Mendes, originally from Kingston, Jamaica, received her undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Florida. She came to URMC in search of a robust program that focused on glial biology and a collaborative environment. She chose the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience to complete her thesis work due in part to Majewska's record of mentoring students and her lab's reputation for conducting leading research in brain development.

Mendes has been awarded a F99/K00 NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) fellowship from NINDS. The award was created to provide outstanding young neuroscientists from diverse backgrounds a pathway to develop independent research careers. Unlike traditional graduate student fellowships, this award provides research funding for 6 years, including dissertation research and mentored postdoctoral research career development.

Read the local Jamacian Observer newspaper article.

On Feb. 7, 2018, Majewska lab graduate student, Elissa Wong, successfully defended her toxicology PhD thesis entitled, "Consequences of developmental ethanol exposure on synaptic plasticity, microglial phenotype, and dendritic spine dynamics".

She has started an ORISE postdoctoral fellowship at the US FDA in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Division of Biomedical Physics.

Congratulations, Elissa!"

The complex biology, networks, and symphony of signals that underlie human cognition are a font of endless mystery and wonder to those who study it. For Rianne Stowell, a graduate student in the lab of URMC neuroscientist Ania Majewska, Ph.D., these questions are also a source of artistic inspiration which has led to the creation of striking paintings of the brain's inner workings.

Stowell's most recent creation (above) is based on research which has recently been published in the journal Developmental Neurobiology and sheds new light on the role that immune cells called microglia play in wiring and rewiring the connections between nerve cells.

Stowell recalls wanting to pursue a career in art as far back as elementary school in Pennsylvania and while she carried that desire with her to Moravian College, she also began to explore other academic fields. Her interest in biology and psychology attracted her to a degree in neuroscience and that decision ultimately led her to the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where she is in now in her fourth year of graduate studies in pursuit of her Ph.D. in neuroscience.

Congratulations to Rianne and the Majewska lab for having their paper accepted for publication!

"Cerebellar microglia are dynamically unique and survey Purkinje neurons in vivo"
Authors: Stowell, R. D., Wong, E. L., Batchelor, H. N., Mendes, M. S., Lamantia, C. E., Whitelaw, B. S., & Majewska, A. K.