Author: anna

Poster Presentation

Our undergraduate, Kane Goggans, presented his work in the lab at the Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Hope Center Pilot Award

We are grateful for being awarded a Hope Center Pilot Award to study “Sleep regulation of the brain-gut axis throughout lifespan” in collaboration with the lab of Meng Wu. 

Published paper

The paper, “The promise and peril of comparing fluorescence lifetime in biology revealed by simulations” has been published in eLife.

Poster presentation

Our undergraduate, David Kim, presented his work in the lab at the Fall 2024 Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Society for Neuroscience meeting

At Neuroscience 2024, SfN‘s annual meeting, Chen Lab was represented by Dr. Chen and our summer student from the last two summers, Drake Gorecki, who presented at the poster session.

Published paper

The paper, “A modular chemigenetic calcium indicatorfor multiplexed in vivo functional imaging” has been published in Nature Methods. Congratulations to all the authors!

Poster presentation

Chen Lab was represented at this year’s Neuroscience Retreat by Waleed Babar, a graduate student in the lab.

Thesis defense

It finally happened! Chen Lab’s first graduate student has defended his thesis “Studying the Dynamics of Neuromodulators in the Brain by Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging” with excellence. Congratulations, Dr. Pingchuan Ma, on this milestone in your academic journey.

Undergraduate summer research

Here’s a glimpse of poster presentations by our ambitious summer students ( Hanna Jachna, Drake Gorecki, Fapianey Alexandre, David Kim, Lindsey Christinger) at the research symposiums this summer. Well done, and a big THANK YOU to all of you!

Congrats David!

We’re thrilled to announce that our undergraduate student, David Kim, has been selected as the winner of the 2024-2025 COBRAS Feldman Fellowship!We’re incredibly proud of you, David!

Welcome summer students!

Chen lab welcomes all our summer students; David Kim, Lindsey Christinger, Drake Gorecki, Fapianey Alexandre and Hanna Jachna. We are very fortunate to have you all, and wishing you a productive summer!

INSPIRE Symposium

Lizzie and Waleed showcased their research at the INSPIRE Symposium recently, displaying their poster presentations.

Recent achievements by our students.

Congratulations to our undergrad David Kim for receiving a BioSURF Summer Fellowship!  And congrats for our grad students, Lizzie for receiving the Outstanding Service and commitment to St. Louis Award , Pingchuan for receiving the Excellence in Research Award, and Waleed for receiving the Student Group Member of the Year Award. Way to go!

Paper published

The paper “Fast and slow: Recording neuromodulator dynamics across both transient and chronic time scales” has now been published in the journal Science Advances.

Paper published

The paper “A Cre-dependent reporter mouse for quantitative real-time imaging of protein kinase A activity dynamics” has now been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Congrats!

We congratulate Aditi Ashwin and Drake Gorecki, both of whom will begin their PhD programs at Wash U and Northwestern respectively!  Additionally, we welcome Drake back this summer as part of ENDURE before sending him off on his PhD journey! 

Scialog Awards

It is with great pleasure that we announce we received two Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards. Read more at Scialog: Molecular Basis of Cognition Funding Awarded to 7 Research Teams and Kavli Foundation: Molecular Mechanisms of Memory

Farewell Aditi

Saying goodbye to a friend and coworker like Aditi is always hard, and her departure saddens us. We’ll miss her influence and presence in the lab. Thank you, Aditi, for your contributions to the lab. Good luck with the new and exciting opportunities that await you! ♡

Poster sessions

Here’s some pictures from recent poster session where Chen Lab had representation. Below is Sophie Ma’s poster presentation at the Undergraduate Symposium and Drake Gorecki at the ENDURE closing symposium:

Neuroscience Retreat

Poster session at the recent Neuroscience Retreat.

We’re moved!

Yes, it’s finally happened. NRB is our new lab-home. Before and after packing/cleaning:

Congratulation Lizzie!

Our lab member and MD/PhD student (MSTP program) Lizzie Tilden was recently awarded NIH F30 grant. Way to go Lizzie!

Welcoming new lab member

Waleed Babar is a graduate student at the Neurosciences program and recently decided to join our lab. Welcome Waleed!

Juneteenth

Chen lab at the WashU hosted Juneteenth 2023 celebration.

Farewell party

Farewell Party for Peter and Samarth. All the best on your new adventures!

Congrats Sophie and Ricky!

Our undergraduates Sophie Ma and Ricky Wang have been selected for BioSURF stipend. Way to go! Image by Freepik

Departures

Congratulations to Alicia Repka who is graduating soon. She will be pursuing a PhD in biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt. Good Luck Alicia! Another of our lab members, Samarth Aggarwal is also moving on. He was accepted into the PhD program in Imaging Science here at WashU. Good Luck to him as well!

Master Thesis Defense

Congratulations to Peter Chen on his Master’s defense! Peter’s thesis can be found here: Optical Perturbation of Protein Kinase A Activity via Photoactivatable Inhibitor PeptidesPhotoactivatable Inhibitor Peptides.

New Year’s celebration

Since many of our lab members traveled over the holidays we finally got to have our Holiday/New Year’s outing. We had a blast as always with lots of laughter and excellent food. Now we are looking forward to yet an exiting year! This year we will relocate to NRB, the new Neuroscience Research Building.

Poster session

Pingchuan is presenting his poster at Washington University Biochemistry and Biophysics Community Kickoff Poster Session.

Congrats Peter and Samarth!

Congratulations to Peter Chen and Samarth Aggarwal for being offered the Dean’s Select Fellowship in the BME and Imaging Science PhD programs respectively.

Welcoming our 2 newest lab members

July-22

We are welcoming two new members to our lab. Sophie Ma joins us as an undergraduate researcher, and Samarth Aggarwal is our new research technician who recently relocated from San Diego, CA.

Chen Lab is growing

We are so excited to welcome two new lab members to our lab! Aditi Maduskar graduated with a PhD in Neuroscience from IISER, Pune. For her doctoral thesis she used zebrafish as a model system to investigate the signal transduction mechanisms that underlie neuropeptidergic regulatoin of feeding behaviour and associated modalities. In Chen lab, she […]

Happy Graduation Day!

Warmest congratulation to Chen Lab member Peter Chen on earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering! Peter will be pursuing his Master’s here at Wash U this fall.

Ask A Neuroscientist

Neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis answer some of the frequently asked questions by Brain Discovery’s 4th-6th grade students.

Poster presentation

Chen Lab’s senior lab member Pingchuan Ma presented his research recently at the Neuroscience Retreat.

Progress

In 2023 our lab will be relocating to the new Neuroscience Research Building, under construction right now. Here’s is a time lapse video of the progress.

Welcome Lizzie!

MSTP student Lizzie Tilden joins the lab. Her Ph.D thesis work will focus on investigating the potential role of PKA in sleep. Using simultaneous Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Fluorescent Lifetime Photometry (FLiP) in freely behaving mice, she can precisely track PKA activation and characterize or manipulate activity patterns throughout the sleep and wake cycle. We are […]

This time of year

Our campus is just beautiful this time of year. These adorable flowers lining our building we get to enjoy every day we come into work.

Open Positions in Chen Lab

We would like to grow bigger! Positions available: Staff Scientist, Senior Scientist, Postdoc, Research Tech, Programmer.