Collaborations

Our lab has been working in close collaboration with Dr. Beenhakker and his lab members since 2015, initially sharing their EEG equipment, then receiving from them invaluable assistance in designing, crafting, setting up and maintaining our own EEG apparatus. Most recently, we worked together to perform in vivo multi-electrode single-cell electrophysiology recordings to investigate brainstem neuronal activity underlying sleep changes during and after anesthesia. This exciting  project led to a senior-author publication featuring an international visiting student and a Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate student as co-authors: Acute single-unit multi electrode recordings from the brainstem of head-fixed mice (Pikus M et al, 2024).

We are collaborating with UVA’s team of cardiac surgery-scientists to investigate neuroinflammation and cognitive dysfunction in animal models of cardio-pulmonary bypass and extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation. My lab contributed expertise in quantitative brain histology and behavioral assessments, demonstrating acute neuroinflammation and cognitive impairments in both rodent and porcine models subjected to extracorporeal circulation. This partnership resulted in two peer-reviewed publications featuring several surgery trainees as co-authors: Rodent model of cardiopulmonary bypass demonstrates systemic inflammation and neuromarker changes (Zhang et al, 2024) and Adenosine 2A Receptor Agonism Improves Survival in a Porcine Model of Extracorporeal Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (Wisniewski et al, 2024).