Our Lab

The lab consists of 2 postdoctoral fellows, 2 graduate students, 1 research specialist, 4 research technicians, and 15 undergraduates in addition to Dr. Rhodes.

Dr. Justin Rhodes

jrhodes@illinois.edu

Justin S. Rhodes received his undergraduate BS degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1995, an MS in Fisheries at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1998, another MS in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. He then was a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon & Health & Science University and an instructor at Lewis & Clark College until 2005 until he joined the Department of Psychology, Biological Division at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2005. Dr. Rhodes currently affiliated with the Neuroscience Program, Program for Ecology and Evolution and Conservation Biology, the Institute for Genomic Biology and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute NeuroTech Group at UIUC. His fields of research interests are behavior genetics and neurobiology of motivation and addiction, effects of exercise on brain function and cognition using mice as a model organism, and the social impact driving neurbiological sex change in clownfish.

Honors include: Young Scientist Award, 2008, International Behavior and Neural Genetics Society (The Society that publishes Genes, Brain and Behavior)

Curriculum Vitae (CV) - Click Here

Classes Recently Taught

The Brain and the Mind
Advances in Psychobiology
Evolutionary Neuroscience

Postdoctoral Research Fellows

Dr. Gillian Hamilton

gillianh@illinois.edu

Joined Lab: January 2013
Degree: Ph.d Psychology
Bio: Gillian F. Hamilton is a Postdoctoral research fellow in the Rhodes lab with an interest in how various intrinsic and extrinsic factors, such as exercise and drugs of abuse, can affect hippocampal plasticity. She received her Ph.D in the Fall of 2012 from the University of Delaware under the mentorship of Dr. Anna Klintsova. During her time in graduate school, Gillian Hamilton worked with a rodent model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders where she investigated the long-term impact of a third trimester alcohol exposure on both mPFC Layer II/III dendritic morphology and also on hippocampal adult neurogenesis and dentate gyrus granule cell morphology. In addition, she studied whether an intervention of wheel running alone or wheel running followed by environmental complexity could alleviate the alcohol-induced deficits in both the mPFC and the hippocampus. Currently, she is examining the role of adult neurogenesis on hippocampal dependent tasks through the use of a transgenic mouse model.

Dr. Sam Perez

spere2@illinois.edu

Joined Lab: January 2013
Degree: Ph.d Human Physiology
Bio: Sam D Perez received a B.S. in Chemistry and did a post-baccalaureate Research Training in Neuroscience at the University of California in Riverside. Prior to his doctoral work, he served in the US Army in fulfillment of a prior commitment; then worked as a laboratory coordinator in the core center for molecular biology and gene therapy at Loma Linda University. Sam was awarded his PhD from the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology in the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 2012. Prior to joining the Rhodes Lab, he briefly held an adjunct faculty position, lecturing in Human Anatomy and Physiology and Molecular & Cellular Biology at the School of Math and Science at the Baltimore County College in Maryland. A former athlete, his current area of research interests are investigating the effects of exercise on brain cognition, the impact of nutritional enhancement on molecular factors involved in learning and memory, and the measurement of positive synergic of exercise and nutrition as an intervention to treat addictive disorders.

Graduate Students

Martina Mustroph

mmustr2@illinois.edu

Joined Lab: September 2009
Degree: B.S. Psychology & Neuroscience
Bio: I am an MD/PhD student in the neuroscience program. Joining the Rhodes lab was a natural continuation of my interests in drug addiction and exercise-induced hippocampal plasticity. Currently, I am interested in elucidating the mechanisms by which exercise can facilitate extinction of conditioned place preference for cocaine. My long-term goal is to be a physician-scientist conducting basic neuroscience research in the area of drug addiction.

Petra Majdak

pmajda2@illinois.edu

Joined Lab: Summer 2011
Degrees: B.A. Biochemistry, M.S. Biomedical Sciences
Bio: I am a Neuroscience MD/PhD student with a long standing interest in studying the neurobiology of addiction. My previous research projects in pharmacology and neuroscience focused on adolescent psychostimulant abuse, and my Master’s project investigated the effects of a genetic polymorphism on heroin and morphine addiction in a transgenic mouse model. Currently, I am interested in investigating the effects of amphetamine administration on neurogenesis and cognition in various mouse models.