Lab Members
Aditya Ramamurthy, MS
- Lab Manager
Current Projects
Tong Chun Wen MD, PhD
- Associate Research Scientist
Current Projects
Michelle Corkrum, MD, PhD
- Postdoctoral Residency Fellow
Dr. Michelle Corkrum graduated from Wellesley College in 2012 with a degree in Neuroscience and subsequently joined the MD-PhD program at the University of Minnesota. For her PhD research, Michelle studied the role of astrocytes in brain reward signaling. She defended her PhD in May 2019 and graduated from the University of Minnesota with her MD-PhD in 2021. Michelle is currently a Child Neurology resident at Columbia University Medical Center. She is conducting research during her residency training in the lab of Dr. Jason Carmel investigating the use of non-invasive neuromodulation to target circuits disrupted in pediatric neurology diseases. In her career as a child neurologist physician-scientist, Michelle aims to investigate non-invasive neuromodulation interventions to develop efficacious treatment options for pediatric patients.
Evan Joiner, MD
- Chief Resident, Department of Neurosurgery
Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Evan Joiner received a BA from Yale University and MD from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. His interest in this topic stemmed from a desire to harness the promise of technology to improve the lives of patients with spinal cord injury who, up until recently, have had limited hope for meaningful recovery. The team's most recent findings include a functional map of motor responses to dorsal epidural spinal cord stimulation that they hope will help to guide stimulation strategies for the recovery of arm and hand function.
More on Evan Joiner, MD
Natasha Kharas, MD, PhD
- Neurosurgery Resident
Dr. Natasha Kharas received her MD and PhD degrees from McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. A native New Yorker, Natasha earned her undergraduate degree in neural science (with highest honors) from NYU before enrolling in the MD/PhD program at McGovern, where she was elected to the medical student honor society Alpha Omega Alpha. Dr. Kharas has been working with Dr. Casey Halpern’s lab at Stanford University to examine the role of intracranial stimulation in epilepsy, and with Dr. David Sandberg at McGovern on a translational research project examining the safety and pharmacokinetics of injecting the chemotherapy drug panobinostat directly into the fourth ventricle to treat posterior fossa tumors in children. She received an NIH F31 grant for her PhD dissertation research, which examined the neural underpinnings of how sleep improves cognitive performance; she also performed research that examined the neural basis for how unconscious visual stimuli alter behavior.
