Interested in joining our team?
Are you a high school student looking for research experience?
We understand that high schoolers motivated to seek careers in STEM would like to take part in laboratory research. Our group does host high schoolers only in the summer and through CUNY’s CollegeNow program. This opportunity is prioritized for students within the NYC public school system that lack rigorous science programs and it provides a summer stipend to allow you to be 100% focused on research for two months! If you’d like to find out if you’re eligible, please reach out to their coordinators!
Are you an undergraduate at Queens College?
If you have never worked in a lab, that’s okay! However, consider that it is at least a 10+ hour commitment per week and we expect you to be accountable for this time. We encourage all our students enrolled in an HMNS, psychology (PSYC391/392), and biology (BIOL390/391/395/396) major to consider the research credit you can sign up for to carry out in our lab. For the summer, you are also welcome to participate in our behavioral ecology field course (BIOL380/680) or secure funding for an Undergraduate Summer Research Program (USRP). Similarly, as an undergraduate, you may also be eligible for Queens College’s accelerated track, which provides graduate training and research during your undergraduate training. If any of this sounds like something that would interest you, please reach out through our contact page form. Lastly, we were recently awarded an NIH URISE training grant to support underrepresented minorities in STEM. If you see yourself as eligible for this funding please reach out through the contact form below!
Are you interested in graduate studies as an M.Sc. or Ph.D. student?
Our lab covers three areas of research offered through the department of biology at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. This includes an affiliation with CUNY’s Cognitive Neuroscience Master’s program and CUNY’s Doctoral Programs. We have projects that fall into the arms of Molecular Cellular Development (MCD), Evolution Ecology Behavior (EEB), and the CUNY Neuroscience Collaborative (CNC). We are a diverse and inclusive group of people! If you are interested in our research please identify a specific research stream (MCD/EEB/CNC) that interests you and reach out through our contact form and any relevant experience you may already have. We also encourage you to explore the training experience provided through CUNY and its Graduate Center to see how your training unfolds in our program.
Principal Investigator
Sebastian Alvarado, Ph.D.
Sebastian completed his Ph.D. at McGill University and was an A.P. Giannini Fellow at Stanford University. He is interested in how plastic molecular substrates can shape a genome to dynamic changes in the environment. Outside of his research program, Sebastian consults for the entertainment sector with Thwacke and writes books about science fiction. You can follow him on Twitter @Sebcredible
Graduate Students
Annaliese Chang
Annaliese is a EEB doctoral candidate and resident bioinformatician. She is interested in the patterns of DNA methylation and transcription that accompany a color change and their ties to neuroendocrine signals
Raven Pitt
Raven is a QC Masters student who will be studying how chromatin remodeling changes in Daphnia magna following exposure to different genotoxic mutagenic stresses
Matthew Hackett
Matt is an incoming CNC doctoral candidate studying coloration and its effect on neural substrates in the A. burtoni and in bluegill sunfish. You can find him talking about nerdy stuff on Twitter @Nom_the_Wise
Anastasia MartaShVILI
Anastasia is a Graduate Center Cognitive Neuroscience Masters Student. She is currently investigating how visual ecology can shape female mate preference and reproductive biology.
Postbaccalaureates
Chelsea O’Neill
Chelsea is a Postbaccalaureate and QC alumnus that is setting up laboratory protocols around the primary culture of chromatophores from our model system as well as the transgenic labeling of epigenetic modulators in our model system
Fatima Haruna IYA
Fatima is an undergraduate in QC’s neuroscience program and she is currently investigating the effects of ambient light on the dorso-ventral countercurrent shading that changes within our model cichlid system.
Undergraduates
Kevin Almeida
Kevin is an undergraduate in QC’s neuroscience program and a member of our team of behavioral scorers! He has been important for cataloging behaviors in our cichlid and bluegill model systems
YAel Mushell
Yael is an undergraduate researcher within the biology department that was initially involved in profiling behavior in fall army worm and is now assisting with scoring efforts for many projects using our cichlid model system.
Renisha Sharma
Renisha is a LSAMP undergraduate researcher who is currently investigating how patterns in our cichlid system change with social rank within their scales and chromatophores.
Tasnia Jennifer
Tasnia is a Macaulay undergraduate student that is currently playing a support role in our ongoing female mate preference study.
Talya Kronisch
Talya is a Macaulay undergraduate student that has played a support role for projects related to exogenous addition of patterns on our fish as well as assaying sex-specific behavioral variation between males and females of our cichlid model.
Aliza Mandelbaum
Aliza is an Macaulay undergraduate student in QC’s Neuroscience Program. She is a member of HMNS and received a SURPS award for summer research. She has played a support role for projects related to DNA methylation patterns that are associated with color change. She is currently looking at sex-specific behaviors in our model cichlid system.
Collaborators
Maral Tajerian,Ph.D.
Dr. Tajerian is a preclinical pain researcher that has been a longtime collaborator interested in the limits of brain plasticity.
Wei Fang, Ph.D.
Dr. Fang is a forest ecologist and faculty at Pace University and she helps us environmental phenotypes from space!
Yefim RAdomyselskiy
Yefim is a Physics Chief Lab Technician and go to engineer behind all of our tools, lighting, dosing, camera rigs, and the Tanganyikan sunsets that our fish our thankful for every day!