Susan E. Maloney, PhD
Principal Investigator
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry. I received my Ph.D. in Psychology with a Behavioral Neuroscience emphasis from the University of Missouri – St. Louis and completed my thesis work on the neurotoxic and behavioral consequences of clinically-relevant early postnatal anesthesia exposure as a graduate researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at WUSTL. In 2012, I joined the lab of Dr. Joseph Dougherty in the Department of Genetics at WUSM as a postdoc to study autism behavioral genetics. I joined the WUSTL Department of Psychiatry faculty in 2017. My current research centers on the impact of genetic and environmental liabilities for intellectual and developmental disorders (IDD) on neural circuit function. Within the Intellectual and Developmental Disorders Research Center at WUSTL, I serve as Co-Director of both the Model Systems Core and the Animal Behavior Subunit, which provides rodent model behavioral characterization and analysis to IDD Investigators. In addition, I am Assistant Director of the Animal Behavior Core at WUSTL.
Katie McCullough, BS
Research Assistant
Katie McCullough is a research assistant from O’Fallon, MO. She graduated from Drake University in Biochemistry. Her undergrad research focused on genetic elements of swine flu. When she started in the lab, she discovered her love of neuroscience and animal behavior. Outside the lab, she has 2 dogs (Shiloh and Astro) and a tortoise (Francis). She loves reading and subscribe to all thing’s true crime. Her fears: Heights and spiders.
Raylynn Swift, MA
Research Technician II
Raylynn Swift is a research technician in the lab supporting mouse behavioral research. She graduated from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2020 with a Master’s degree in psychology with an emphasis in behavioral neuroscience. At home, she has two rat roommates and is working on expanding her houseplant collection.
Joe Dougherty, PhD
Close Collaborator
Joe is a Professor of Genetics and Psychiatry at WUSTL. He is broadly interested in how a single genome creates the cellular diversity that is discovered in the brain, and how perturbations of specific cell types in the brain may lead to disorders of the nervous system, as well as alterations of normal behavior. His lab approaches these questions using the tools of mouse transgenics and conditional knockouts, but guides the studies using information gleaned from human genetics studies