Research Staff

Carissa is a Research Program Manager for the Kalin Lab at Harlow.  She oversees the non-human primate side of the lab and helps facilitate the projects within the protocol limits.  Carissa has been with the Kalin Lab since Feb 21.  Prior to that, Carissa worked as a Senior Research Specialist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center for 17.5 years.

Improving the statistical quality, biological relevance, and convenience of analysis of high throughput data sets, and integrating different data sources into unified models, is most often the focus of Dan’s attention. He currently works with resting state and event related fMRI, structural MRI, ASL and physiology data, with interests that include developmental trajectories and how mental health issues, particularly anxiety, arise from a molecular to a structural and functional level. Dan began research in developmental neurobiology, mapping the source of the enteric nervous system [1], and cloning and sequencing vasoactive intestinal peptide [2] in the UW Anatomy dept. He received a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology (2002) investigating the signal transduction of Ras [3] and Raf [4], working in the UW Human Oncology and Oncology depts. As a post-doctoral fellow in the UW Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Department, Dan created software to model multi-region thermodynamic kinetics of signal transduction in development, cancer, and aging. Followed by modulating self-renewal and differentiation of human embryonic stem cells via engineered topographic cues, in the UW VetMed and Chemical & Biological Engineering depts. [5, 6, 7]. Dan started as an information processing consultant in the UW Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior in 2007 and joined Ned’s lab in 2011 [8].

As co-investigator on multiple Kalin lab projects, Jonathan’s research combines neuroimaging and molecular studies in pre-clinical models to identify the mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders. Jonathan has been involved in studies using fMRI and µPET at the University of Wisconsin for over 15 years, first as a postdoc in the Training Program in Emotion Research (2004-2007), and subsequently as a member of the Kalin laboratory at the HealthEmotions Research Institute in the Department of Psychiatry, where he is studying Anxious Temperament, a nonhuman primate model of the childhood risk to develop anxiety and affective disorders. His translational research has focused on the role of the extended amygdala in emotion and anxiety in human and nonhuman primates. The research program employs intraoperative MRI gene delivery methods and chemogenetic technologies (e.g., DREADDs) to alter the neural circuitry underlying Anxious Temperament with the goal of developing novel treatment strategies for people suffering from severe anxiety and depression. You can follow Jonathan on twitter @jonoler

Patrick has a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Michigan and he has been a member of the Kalin Lab for over 20 years.  His work is focused on identifying the molecular underpinnings that determine why some children have an increased risk to develop anxiety disorders and depression as they mature into adulthood.  Children that stably display extreme levels of behavioral inhibition (shyness) throughout early life are said to have an extremely anxious temperament (AT), and they have an elevated chance of subsequently developing psychiatric illnesses.  To discover the important molecular alterations in these at-risk individuals, his work is performed with non-human primate (rhesus monkey) and rodent (rat and mouse) models of extreme AT that have been developed over the last twenty-five years in the Kalin Laboratory. Currently, he and his colleagues are screening young animals to identify those that naturally have extreme AT.  These animals are then studied with a variety of behavioral assays, multimodal imaging methods including positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and state-of-the-art molecular methods including RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq), designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) and RNA interference (RNAi).  As the lab identifies AT-related candidate genes, they can further implicate these genes by increasing or decreasing their expression in key brain regions like the amygdala through viral vectors strategies.  The impact of these manipulation can then be assessed on the expression of AT and on brain function and structure.  Ultimately, identifying the molecular processes that mediated the risk to develop psychiatric illnesses will facilitate the development of medications to prevent or treat these potentially devastating illnesses.

Lisa oversees the human neuroimaging studies in the lab, working with Dr. Kalin on studies of anxiety and anxiety risk in preadolescent children. She is broadly interested in understanding the brain basis of psychiatric disorders, with a particular focus on the neural correlates of clinical symptoms and the translation of findings from the lab to the clinic. Lisa received her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of California-San Diego in 2009, with studies focusing on sensory processing in patients with schizophrenia. As a post-doctoral fellow Lisa worked with Dr. Stephan Heckers at Vanderbilt University (2009 – 2012) on behavioral and neuroimaging studies of memory ability and hippocampal integrity across the psychotic spectrum. Lisa’s work the Kalin lab aims to quantify the neural correlates of childhood anxiety disorders and the risk to develop anxiety disorders by utilizing in-depth clinical phenotyping in conjunction with multimodal neuroimaging, behavioral and physiological measures.