Postdoc Advisory Panel
The Postdoctoral Advisory Panel is a group of postdocs who represents over 250 postdocs at Brown University. They volunteer to meet periodically with the Division of BioMed's Associate Dean for Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and Postdoctoral Program & Data Manager, and the Graduate School's Assistant Dean of Recruiting and Professional Development with a goal to enhance the postdoctoral experience at Brown.
As a valued member of the Brown University community, your opinion matters. Feel free to contact any member of the Postdoc Advisory Panel with any concerns or ideas. If your department is not represented below, contact Susan Rottenberg, Postdoctoral Program and Data Manager, to volunteer. All meeting minutes are listed below.
Advisory Panel Meetings:
Postdoc Advisory Panel Meetings are scheduled three times per year in the fall, spring, and summer.
Upcoming meeting:
Date: Spring 2013
Time: tbd
Location: tbd
Current Postdoc Advisory Panel Members
Read below bios to learn more about the current members of your Postdoctoral Advisory Panel.
Havovi Chichger (Medicine) is originally from England where she received her B.Sc in Biochemistry from Kings College London in 2001. She spent 2 years researching cancer cell signaling at Edinburgh University before beginning her graduate studies in Physiology at University College London. In 2011, upon completion of her Ph.D. based on renal glucose handling in metabolic disease, she moved to Brown University to join the laboratory of Dr. Harrington, within the Vascular Research Laboratory. Her postdoctoral research focuses on the molecular mechanisms responsible for the disruption of the endothelial barrier in settings of acute lung injury.
Sebastien Cueff (Engineering) was born and grew up in France. He received his Engineering degree (equivalent to Master's Degree) in Materials Science and Nanotechnology from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA - Rennes - France) in 2008. He then obtained the PhD degree in the CIMAP Laboratory ( University of Caen, France). His PhD work was focused on Silicon-based materials for Photonics and Optoelectronics applications. Since December 2011, he is working in Pr. Zia's lab at Brown University as a PostDoctoral Research Associate, where his work focus on resonantly-enhanced lanthanide emitters for active nanophotonics devices.
Marcelo Dias (Engineering) was born in Brazil. He grew up in the state of São Paulo where he received his B.Sc. in Physics from the State University of São Paulo in 2004 and his M.Sc. in Theoretical Physics from the Theoretical Physics Institute at UNESP in 2007. He moved to the U.S. in 2007 to start a graduate program in Physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focused on elasticity and geometry of soft materials applied to controlled growth and folding as a tool for design and the understanding of pattern formation in nature. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2012 he joined the School of Engineering at Brown to work with Professor Thomas Powers on hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms.
Ashish Garg (Chemistry) was born in India where he completed his master's degree in Organic Chemistry from Banaras Hindu University, and his PhD with a fellowship from CSIR-India from Indian Institute of technology Kanpur, India focusing on in small natural product synthesis. Ashish is currently pursuing a post-doc fellowship under Prof. David E. Cane in the Department of Chemistry at Brown, focusing on the mechanistic and stereo-chemical details of Polyketide biosynthesis.
Kevin Goldberg (German Studies) is a Cogut Center Postdoctoral Fellow in International Humanities. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he completed his B.S. at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN and his M.A. at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He recently completed his Ph.D. in European history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kevin has written on the history of viticulture and the wine trade in Germany, Austria, and California. In the Department of German Studies, he will teach courses on nineteenth-century German-Jewry, as well as commerce history and food cultures.
Scott Langevin (Community Health) is originally from Plattsburgh, NY. After earning a B.S. in biology from Siena College and a certificate in Cytotechnology from Albany Medical College, he worked for 5 years as a cytotechnologist, screening pathologic specimens for cancer. During this time he also earned a Masters in Healthcare Administration from Quinnipiac University and then went on to earn a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, with a focus on molecular cancer epidemiology. His primary interests involve genetic/epigenetic-environment interactions and biomarker research as they pertain to cancer. Scott is currently working under the direction of Dr. Karl Kelsey, studying prognostic biomarkers in bladder cancer.
Christian Nelson (MCB) was born in Rochester, NY and received his B.S. in Biological Science from Cornell University at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2004. Staying in Ithaca NY, he then earned his Ph.D. in Infectious Diseases from Cornell University at the College of Veterinary Medicine in 2009. His research focused on understanding the structural changes that occur to the viral capsid of canine parvovirus and feline panleukopenia virus during viral entry. Christian is currently working in the laboratory of Dr. Walter Atwood, studying entry and uncoating of the human polyomaviruses. Christian serves on the Marketing subcommittee.
Abigail Polter (MPPB) grew up in Northeastern Ohio and received her bachelor's degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2005. She earned a PhD in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2010 and joined the laboratory of Dr. Julie Kauer in the MPPB department at Brown in 2011. Her research focuses on inhibitory synapses in the Ventral Tegmental Area of the brain and their modulation by stress and drugs of abuse.
Jordan Renna (Neuroscience) grew up in Fresno, CA and earned a Bachelor's Degree from UC Davis. After spending a year in the Franciscan Volunteer Ministry, he earned a doctorate in Vision Sciences from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Since joining the Berson lab at Brown University he has been studying retinal ganglion cell-photoreceptors and the effect of ambient light on the development of the visual system.
Holly Richendrfer (MCB) (Developmental and Neuro Biology) a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of BioMed - MCB. She was born and grew up in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania and resided in PA until her move to Rhode Island. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Messiah College in Grantham, PA in biology pre-med. She then went on to obtain a master's degree from Bloomsburg University (PA) in the area of biology where she studied the effects of spine removal on health and activity rates in green sea urchins. In August of 2010 she went on to complete her PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA). There she studied the development of neuronal and neurotransmitter sex differences in the brain of the Syrian hamster and how those differences related to sex differences in behavior. She is currently working in the Creton lab on the effects of calcium modulatory drugs on early brain and heart development and its relation to anxiety behavior in zebra fish larvae.
Richard Tyson Smith (Sociology) is an American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow in the Brown Department of Sociology. His research is generally concerned with gender and health. More specifically, his work investigates how men and women avoid, seek, engage in, and respond to violence. He has just finished a book, titled “Fighting for Recognition: Violence and Identity among Professional Wrestlers,” that will be published in 2013 by Duke University Press. The book examines how working-class men make sense of professional wrestling’s pain, emotions, violence, gendered paradoxes, and recognition. His current research is focused on American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Through interviews and participant-observation research, the project investigates the readjustment that men and women soldiers undergo when they return from war deployments. At Brown he teaches courses on Gender, Military Health, and the Sociological Imagination. He has also taught courses on media, sports, and criminal justice. Prior to his time at Brown University he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers University Institute for Health. He received his Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2009.