The bendesky lab

© drawings of Betta sp. by Jordan Ahava

Andrés Bendesky

Principal Investigator

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Andrés got his MD from UNAM, Mexico, his PhD from Rockefeller University, and was a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow at Harvard. He is interested in how complex behaviors are generated by the brain and how they evolve.

Kerel Francis

Lab Manager and Research Assistant

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Kerel received his MSc in Neuroscience from the University of Bremen. Currently he is working in collaboration with the Kӧnig lab at the University of Zurich whose aim is to understand the evolution of social behavior in mice.

Young Mi Kwon

Research Assistant

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Young Mi got her BS from Harvard and her masters from the University of Cambridge, UK. She is studying genetics in Betta fish.

Alec Palmiotti

Research Assistant

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Alec received his BA from Oberlin College studying Neuroscience and Hispanic Studies. He is currently working on developing genetically modified Betta fish and helps coordinating the fish facility.

Amy Norovich

Postdoc

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Amy received her PhD from Columbia University and her BSc from MIT. She is studying the neural basis of sexually dimorphic behaviors in Betta splendens.

Christoph Gebhardt

Postdoc

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Chris received his PhD from KIT and was a postdoc in the lab of Filippo Del Bene. He aims to understand the neural basis of differences in parental care behavior in Peromyscus.

Pei-Yin Shih

Postdoc

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Pei received her PhD from Caltech working in the lab of Paul Sternberg. She is studying the genetic basis of aggression in Betta splendens.

Jan-Niklas Runge

Postdoc

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Jan received his PhD from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and his BSc and MSc from the University of Göttingen, Germany. He is studying the genomics of inbreeding and its consequences in a long-term field study of free-living wild house mice using novel whole-genome imputation approaches.

Jennifer Merritt

Postdoc

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Jenny received her PhD from Emory University. She is studying the neural and genetic mechanisms of alternative life histories in closely related species of Peromyscus.

Joshua Greene

Postdoc

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Josh received his MD from Cornell and a PhD from Rockefeller University. He is studying CNS regulation of the adrenomedullary system in Peromyscus.

Natalie Niepoth

PhD Student (E3B program)

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Natalie got her BSc from Rice University and a masters in evolutionary biology from the University of Amsterdam. She is studying the genetic basis of anxiety and exploration in Peromyscus mice.

Claire Everett

PhD Student (NBB program)

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Claire received her BA from Barnard College. She is studying the visual cues critical for evoking aggression in Betta splendens. She is also interested in the neural circuits underlying Betta visual processing of aggression-inducing stimuli.

Kimberly Hernandez

PhD Student (NBB program)

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Kim is a PhD student in the lab jointly supervised by Andrés and Steven Siegelbaum.

Wyatt Toure

PhD Student (E3B program)

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Wyatt received his B.Sc. from Concordia University and his M.Sc. from McGill University. He is interested in the evolution of molecular mechanisms underlying adaptive phenotypes.

Yuyang Zhu

Master student

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Yuyang is a Statistics student at GSAS. He is extracting behavioral features and validating models on in Betta fish behavioral patterns.

Peter Lichtenthal

Undergrad

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Peter is a post-bac in Columbia's E3B program. Peter works in breeding wild caught Betta fish, and assists Claire and Madison in their behavioral and genetic work.

Elaine Lee

Undergrad

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Elaine is a student at Columbia College. She is interested in how aggression in Betta splendens manifests on the circuitry level and how aggression circuits differ between males and females.

Joseph Brew

Undergrad

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Joseph is a student at Columbia College in the E3B program. He is interested in the behavioural and evolutionary impacts of climate change as well as understanding complex behavioural processes through the study of genetics.

Bliss Bagnato-Conlin

Undergrad

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Bliss is an undergraduate Neuroscience and Behavior major at Columbia College. She is assisting Amy Norovich in her study of sexually dimorphic behaviors in Betta splendens.

Debbie Leung

Undergrad

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Debbie is a student at Columbia College majoring in E3B and Computer Science. She is interested in studying the genetic mechanisms underlying the behavioural and phenotypic diversity in Betta splendens using molecular techniques and bioinformatics.

Julio Bendesky

Lab Mascot

Julio is a dachshund and really good at detecting and retrieving food (that belongs to others).

Madison Lichak

Undergrad
& Research Assistant

Madison received her BA from Barnard College and completed her senior thesis in the Bendesky lab.
Then she stayed in the lab to coordinate the Betta facility and was working to develop genetically modified Betta fish.

Magdalen Kwarteng

Undergrad

Magdalen was a student at Barnard College and studied visually evoked aggression in Betta fish in the Bendesky Lab.

Emily Lei

Undergrad

Emily was a student at Barnard College and studied, supervised by Natalie Niepoth, how the brain and periphery interact to shape exploratory behavior in Peromyscus mice.

Wenxuan Dan

Master student

Wenxuan was working with Christoph Gebhardt on Peromyscus animal tracking data and modeling of parental care behavior.

Yuqi Miao

Master student

Yuqi was a student at Columbia Mailman Public Health school. In the Bendesky Lab she was working with Claire Everett on developing statistical methods for modelling and analyzing Betta splendens aggressive behavior.

Hiroki Tomida

Master student (E3B program)

Hiroki was a Master student in the E3B program. He was studying the genetic basis of aggressive behavior in Betta fish in the Bendesky lab.