Yehya passes their qualifying exam.
Yehya passed their quals in June 2022. Congratulations on becoming an official PhD candidate.
Kumar Lab organizes a symposium on Machine Learning and Behavior Quantification at IBANGS
The International Brain and Neural Genetics Society organized its 23rd Annual Genes, Brain & Behavior Meeting on May 23rd-27th, 2022 in Memphis at the UTHSC. The meeting was hybrid with over 100 participants. Vivek organized a symposium titled Behavior...
Tufts Genetics and Neuro PhD Students Meet at JAX for a Retreat
Tufts students in the Genetics and Neuroscience programs joined together on April 11 - April 13 in the annual effort to facilitate community between the Boston-based and Bar Harbor-based students. The three-day retreat featured student-talk sessions, student-poster...
Vivek attends the SFARI Investigator Meeting in New York
Vivek attended the SFARI Investigator's meeting on April 11-13 in NYC. The meeting booklet is here. The meeting had ~200 investigators with a wide array of topics from human genetics to systems...
Spectrum Magazine covers our gait/posture methods
Spectrum is a leading online magazine for autism research and treatment. Holly Barker from Spectrum interviewed Vivek and wrote this piece about our Cell Reports paper. ...
Kumar Lab Receives a 2021 SFARI Director’s Award
Press announcement here - the work will fund monitoring of ASD models using our long-term methods. We appreciate the support from SFARI (Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative) which is one of the most innovative funding agencies for biomedical research....
Gait and posture paper is now online at Cell Reports
A tour de force from Keith and Gautam. This is beautiful work. Full text is available here. https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01740-X
Two new Kumar Lab members join
Michelle Berger and Marina Santos have joined the Kumar Lab as Research Associates. More to come on their background and roles in the lab. WELCOME MARINA AND MICHELLE
Summary of our nociception work
A nice summary of our nociception paper by Janine. https://www.mousephenotype.org/news/jax-researchers-develop-new-automated-system-for-recording-pain-behaviour-in-mice/...
Sleep paper is now published online
The article can be found here. Standard link (you may share this link anywhere): https://academic.oup.com/sleep/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sleep/zsab260/6414386 Free-access link (see below for how you may use this link):...
Vivek Co-organizes Sleep/Circadian/AD Short Course at Highseas
Vivek was a co-organizer of the Impacts of Sleep and Circadian Biology on Alzheimer's Disease and Aging from Oct 16-22, 2021 at Highseas Conference Center. The short course had 25 residential students and over 100 virtual students. The instructors included leaders...
Gait Paper is accepted to Cell Reports
The mouse gait paper has been accepted. A preprint is here - the final version will be shorter due to space limitations from the Journal. Congratulations to Keith and Gautam on leading this effort. The work was started by Justin Gardin, a stellar postdoc in the...
Visual determination of frailty – preprint online now
Leinani's and Gautam's paper is online as a preprint. It is currently under review at Nature Aging.
Sleep Paper is accepted
Visual determination of sleep states is accepted in the journal Sleep. Congratulations to Brian and Mandy for leading this effort.
Press Release for two new grants for the lab
We received two new grants. The press release is here. We are looking for additional lab members. https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2021/september/untangling-the-biology-of-addiction
eLife Digest of the grooming paper
Very well written summary of our work in eLife. https://elifesciences.org/digests/63207/lights-camera-action
Updated paper: Gait analysis
An updated version of Gait analysis paper is on Biorxiv. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.29.424780v2 It has new analysis from Keith Sheppard and Gautam Sabnis including several new figures in the supplement. We look forward to getting reviews...
Grooming paper is published in eLife
Paper link is here https://elifesciences.org/articles/63207 Data associated with the paper is here with video data uploaded to Zenodo https://zenodo.org/record/4646088 We also share some videos of our network in action:...
Kumar Lab receives a new grant from NIDA
The Kumar Lab received a grant from NIDA to build new models of addiction. The press release is here https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2020/july/building-better-mouse-models-for-addiction-research The project summary is available here: PROJECT SUMMARY Addiction...
Kumar Lab hosts Dr. Eric Yttri for a virtual visit
Dr. Yttri, from Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Biological Sciences, presented his lab's latest work from this paper. The paper uses unsupervised learning to understand the types of behaviors mice carry out. Dr. Yttri met with postdocs, engineers, and...
Circadian and Sleep Research Support by NIH
I was part of a special emphasis study section last week titled - "Circadian Patterns of Gene Expression Associated with Disease" for RFA-HL-20-016. The RFA was sponsored by NHLBI and NIDA, so most of the proposals revolved around priorities of these two ICs. ...
Vivek attends the 2020 NIDA genetics consortium meeting
Vivek and Arojit attended the NIDA genetics meeting in Bethesda, MD. They presented two posters. Vivek presented our work on cloning of a mutation that regulates cocaine responses. This is a new gene that has not been linked to cocaine responses. Abstract from the...
Vivek gives lecture at Dartmouth
Vivek was invited to give a seminar at Dartmouth University by Dr. Gio Bosco and his postdoctoral fellow Shiva Sathyanarayana. Vivek spoke about the lab's work on Cyfip2 (work of postdoctoral Arojit Mitra, Kyungin Kim, and others). He also spoke about the lab's...
Vivek talks about addiction on WVOM radio in Bangor
Vivek was on the Ric Tyler and George Hale show https://www.wvomfm.com/episode/ghrt-rewind-07-17-kumar-jax-lab-addiction-research-1100/
Vivek Speaks at the Causeway Club on MDI
Vivek gave a lecture on the genetics of addiction at the Causeway Club on behalf of Acadia Family Center. The talk was attended by approximately 50 people. Dr. Dick Dimond also gave a talk preceding Vivek's talk.
Vivek presents at the 2019 Complex Trait Consortium Meeting
Vivek attended and presented at the CTC meeting in UCSD. The CTC meeting is an annual meeting of complex trait geneticists who use model organisms. Vivek spoke on the use of computer vision to extract heritable ethological endophenotypes from mice. The meeting has...
Press Article on Dr. Kumar and Dr. Chesler
https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2019/may/jax-scientists-speak-out-on-the-crisis-of-opioid-addiction
Arojit’s paper demonstrating that TMOD2 is a regulator of cocaine responses is on Biorxiv.
The paper is currently under review and we hope it is published soon. Meanwhile, the preprint is available here. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/648295v1
Vivek speaks at MDIBL on an opioid crisis panel
MDIBL hosted a meeting of researchers on the opioid crisis in Maine. The panel is part of the 46th Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium (MBMSS), an annual statewide gathering at which students and scientists have the opportunity to network, collaborate,...
Vivek gives a talk at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, CT
Vivek gave a talk on the genetics and neuroscience of addiction at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, CT. The talk was attended by several dozen museum attendees and organized by JAX government outreach folks. Vivek also met with Connecticut State Representative,...
Brian’s tracking paper published
Brian's paper on robust mouse tracking is published. This paper describes how to track mice in complicated environments. Sean and others contributed to this paper. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-019-0362-1 Data from the paper is here. [button...
Vivek speaks at the 2019 Maine State Science Fair
Vivek spoke about addiction genetics and neuroscience to high schools students from across the state of Maine. Over 200 students competed in over a dozen categories in this year's science fair. More information about the event is here. Arojit Mitra was...
Vivek gives Maine Engineering Expo Keynote Address
Vivek presents the keynote address at the Maine Engineering Expo. Approximately 150 people attended the banquet. National Engineers Week was initiated to publicly promote the work and contributions of our nation's engineers. During this week, engineering...
Brian’s video compression tests
Visual examples of some of the compression tests. Original sub-panel of video and differences between original and compressed frames. Difference previews are amplified 2x to enhance visibility. Video Acquisition Imaging Hardware All data was acquired using the same...
Lab Lunch May 2017 to celebrate Graduation.
The lab celebrated the end of the school year with a lunch at Side Street Cafe. Congratulations to Kai, who is off to Stanford in the fall. Congratulations to Alden, who is off to University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the fall. A big thanks to Megan McOsker from...
Vivek’s Op-Ed in the Ellsworth American about neurobiology of opioids
In this piece in the Ellsworth American, Vivek discussed what leads to opioid overdose and why those in recovery are at greater risk of...
Kumar lab profiled in the Ellsworth American
The lab was profiled in the Ellsworth American where Vivek discussed treating addiction like a chronic disease.
Lab Hike to Precipice
We hiked the Precipice Trail, a non-technical climb inside Acadia National Park!
Vivek apperas on Love Maine Radio Show in Portland Maine
https://www.themainemag.com/radio/radio-guests/dr-elissa-chesler-dr-vivek-kumar/
Op-ed on addiction published in the Portland Press Herald
Vivek published an Oped in the Portland Press Herald that argues that addiction is a chronic disease....
