Current Lab Members

Ori Goldberg

Ori Goldberg

Ori joined the lab as a Research Assistant in January of 2024, shortly after finishing her bachelors at the University of Maine at Orono. While at UMaine, they studied Physics and Botany, and spent their last two years at the university contributing to Molecular...

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Madison Raza

Madison Raza

Madison is a data analyst who joined the lab in September 2023. She finished her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering in 2023 under Dr. Andre Khalil at the University of Maine, Orono. While at UMaine she worked on identification of cancerous mammograms through mathematical...

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Sophia Szady

Sophia Szady

Sophia started in the lab in the fall of 2023 as the Colby Lunder fellow. As a senior at Colby College, she is majoring in Computational Biology with a minor in Religious Studies. She is working on developing a classifier for the huddling behavior during her year with...

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Cayson Hamilton

Cayson Hamilton

Hey, I'm Cayson! I'm from Highland, Utah. I'm attending Brigham Young University in Utah and I'm the summer student in the Kumar Lab! I'm majoring in Computer Science with an emphasis in Bioinformatics, as well as minoring in Physics and Math. Here in the Kumar Lab...

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Jake Beierle (Postdoctoral Associate)

Jake Beierle (Postdoctoral Associate)

I’m very excited to be the newest member of the Kumar lab, joining as a Postdoctoral Associate in November 2022. During my Ph.D. I studied under Dr. Camron Bryant at Boston University’s Pharmacology department working to elucidate the genetic basis for divergent...

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Malachy Guzman

Malachy Guzman

Malachy is an undergraduate math major at Carleton College and a 2022 Summer Student and an academic Intern in the Kumar Lab. He is interested in the combination of biology, math, and computer science. In the lab, he developed a computer vision model with Brian to...

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Anshul Choudhary

Anshul Choudhary

As a computational scientist, Anshul is working at the intersection of genomics, machine learning and nonlinear dynamics in advancing data-driven scientific discovery. He earned his doctorate in physics focusing on the mathematical modeling of dynamical systems...

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Jaycee Choi

Jaycee Choi

Jaycee is a graduate student who received her undergraduate degree in Biological Science from La Sierra University in 2021. She is currently interested in learning about the feeding behaviors of mice through the use of machine learning and computational work. Her...

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Marina Santos

Marina Santos

Marina is a 2020 graduate from the University of New Hampshire. With their background in animal science, they are excited to continue their drive into drug addiction behavior as a research assistant. During their undergrad, they worked closely with agricultural...

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Yehya Barakat

Yehya Barakat standing with green trees behind them.
Yehya is a graduate student at the Kumar lab. Their background is in pharmacology and behavior. In their time at the Kumar lab, they hope to uncover a potential causal mechanism for hyperactivity disorders. In their spare time, they are an avid horror movie fan and reading… you guessed it.. more horror novels.

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Gautam Sabnis, PhD

Gautam Sabnis, PhD

Gautam joined the lab in 2019 as a Biostatistician. He is interested in using advanced tools and techniques from Statistics for studying mice behaviors. Previously, his research focused on high-dimensional covariance matrix estimation and variable selection in a...

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Tom Sproule

Tom Sproule

At The Jackson Laboratory since 1995, I got my feet wet in Animal Care before spending 22 years in the laboratory of Dr. Derry Roopenian. My role there emphasized complex mouse breeding; a variety of observational assays; PCR and other genetic assays; and project...

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Brian Geuther, M.S.

Brian Geuther, M.S.

Software Engineer Brian is a mechanical engineer by training. He is interested in applying advanced image processing and machine learning methods to extract and quantify mouse behaviors. In his spare time, Brian likes to hike, metal work, and bake. He is also an...

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Vivek Kumar, PhD

Vivek Kumar, PhD

Associate Professor Vivek Joined the lab in 2015. Dr. Kumar received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in Biology. As an undergraduate he worked with Dr. Robert Haselkorn on the genetics of the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter capsulatus. He...

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Lab Alumni

David is a Research Assistant in the Kumar Laboratory who graduated from the Boston University Marine Program. He broadened the scope of his studies to include environmental sciences with a focus in behavioral science. He is particularly interested in using bioacoustics as an indicator of mammalian behavior. Outside of work, David enjoys being outdoors, working on cars and caring for his plants.

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Sandeep Kumar (Postdoctoral Associate)

Sandeep Kumar (Postdoctoral Associate)

I joined the Kumar lab in May 2022 as a postdoctoral associate. In the Kumar lab,  I am continuing my adventure in neuroscience of motivation and reward circuit. I did my PhD in opioid modulation of motivated behaviour in zebra finches from National Brain Research...

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Dhruv Laad

Dhruv Laad

Dhruv was an intern from IIT- Madras and worked on unsupervised behavior extraction from 2020-2021. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhruvlaad/?originalSubdomain=in  

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Shreyas Kulkarni

Shreyas Kulkarni

Shreyas is an undergraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and is doing his Bachelor Thesis at Kumar Lab. He is interested in applications of deep learning. At the lab, he is working on unsupervised identification of mouse behaviors and correlating...

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Michelle Berger

Michelle Berger

Michelle joined the Kumar lab as a research assistant in 2021.  After 20 years of working as a research assistant and data manager in environmental fields ranging from toxicology to climate change to forest ecology, she is returning to her educational roots in animal...

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Kayla Dixon

Kayla Dixon

Kayla Dixon is a undergraduate student at Colby College where she is majoring in Computational Biology and minoring in Data Science. At Colby, Kayla works in Suegene Noh's lab where she is working on identifying pseudogenes in prokaryotes and working in the school's...

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Glen Beane

Glen Beane

GLen Beane is a member of the Computational Sciences Department at The Jackson Laboratory and provides software engineering support to the Kumar Lab. Glen has developed software for the JAX Animal Behavior System (JABS) including software for video acquisition, remote...

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Abed Ghanbari

Abed Ghanbari

As a Scientific Engineer, Abed's goal is to advance software projects that accelerate development of biological technologies. As a result, his work sits at the intersection of computational biology, neuroscience, data science, and software engineering. He has...

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Vihaan Akshaay

Vihaan Akshaay

Vihaan Akshaay is a research intern from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He currently works on applying and improving the use of deep reinforcement learning algorithms to identify mouse behaviors. With the goal of creating robots as intelligent as human...

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Ryan Guardado

Ryan Guardado

Ryan was a Summer Student Intern in 2021. He worked with Yehya on protein stability assays to functionally characterize causal mutations. Ryan attends Brown University. Ryan hails from southern Georgia. Ryan's Linkedin profile.

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M Howard

M Howard

M was an intern from Bucksport High School during the 2020-2021 school year. They worked with Leinani on behavior labeling using JABS.

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Kelli Meattey

Kelli Meattey

Kelli assists Vivek and the lab in many ways. Too many to list. Her official JAX page is here.

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Elaina Cote

Elaina Cote

Elaina was a research intern from MDI high school during the 2018-2019 school year. She returned as a 2022 SSP. She is currently a UMaine sophomore. Elaina returned to lab for the summer of 2023 to work with Jake on pain models.

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Massimo Daul

Massimo Daul

Massimo was a Research Intern from MDI high school in 2018-2019.  He worked with Keith Sheppard on fecal boli counting.

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Ahmed Almaghasilah

Ahmed Almaghasilah

Ahmed is a rotational student from GSBSE at UMaine. He graduated with B.S and M.S in Electrical Engineering from UMaine and currently pursuing his Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering from the same school.  His Master's these focused on diagnosing the early sign of mild...

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Vinit Mehta

Vinit Mehta

Vinit is a visiting student from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, who specializes in the applications of deep reinforcement learning. He is interested to identify mice behaviors in an unsupervised manner and generate an artificial mouse that behaves like an...

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Leinani Hession

Leinani Hession

Leinani is a research intern who graduated from New College of Florida in 2019. The focus of her undergraduate studies was Biology and Computer Science, and she wrote a senior thesis on the intersection of AI and creativity from an embodied, dynamical systems...

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Jennifer Wright

Jennifer Wright

Jennifer Wright comes from a background in business and event management, assisting with the administrative tasks of the Kumar Lab. A native to the Bar Harbor area, she joined The Jackson Laboratory staff in January 2018 and has enjoyed watching the amazing growth and...

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Tionna Ouellette

Tionna Ouellette

Tionna is a predoctoral candidate in the neuroscience program collaboration between Tufts University and The Jackson Laboratory. After completion of a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Maine, she worked with Dr. Simon John on projects that aim to understand...

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Megan Darrell

Megan Darrell

Megan is a rising senior at Wheaton College (MA), studying bioinformatics with a minor in chemistry and a concentration in mathematics. She is joining the lab as a member of the 2019 Summer Student Program and will be conducting social interaction and gait analysis...

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Janine Wotton, PhD

Janine Wotton, PhD

Janine is a computational scientist. She is developing methods to integrate mouse behavior data over long periods of time.

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Avery Lopez

Avery Lopez

Avery is a rising junior at Middlebury College, studying Neuroscience with a minor in Computer Science (2018). This summer (2019) as an SSP, she is piloting a test to investigate the effect of a single gene (TMOD2) deletion on reward and learning behaviors....

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Keith Sheppard, M.S.

Keith Sheppard, M.S.

Software Engineer Keith is developing cool tools to analyze mouse behavior using neural networks. Keith left the lab at the end of 2021 to start his own company.

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Gabrielle Cohn 

Gabrielle Cohn 

2017 JAX Summer Student Gabrielle worked on unsupervised methods to analyze mouse behavior. She is currently a freshman at Stanford.

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Branden Dagenais

Branden Dagenais

Mt. Desert High School Research Intern Branden was an intern during the Summer and Fall of 2017. His interests were in applying bioinformatics for mouse behavior data analysis.

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Christopher Allen

Christopher Allen

Mt. Desert High School Research Intern Chris was an intern in the lab during Summer and Fall 2017 who worked on applying neural networks to detect mouse behavior.  His interests are in robotics..

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Alden Burgess

Alden Burgess

Mt. Desert High School Research Intern Alden is an academic year intern from MDI High School interested in computer science and electrical engineering. He is currently working on a cost-effective and scalable way to read and interpret mouse vocalizations to pinpoint...

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Arojit Mitra, PhD

Arojit Mitra, PhD

Postdoctoral Associate Arojit has a Phd from Laval University in Québec, Canada. He joined the lab in 2017. He is currently doing a second postdoc in France.

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Kai Fox

Kai Fox

Mt. Desert High School Research Intern Kai is an MDI high school Junior with strong interests in computer science and neurobiology. For his internship project with the Kumar Lab, he is working on the processing of video to classify mouse behavior—particularly...

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Sean Deats, M.S.

Sean Deats, M.S.

Research Associate Sean is a behavioral neuroscientist and completed his training at Michigan State University in 2015. His thesis work involved elucidating the neural substrates underlying the direct effects of light on depression- and anxiety-like behaviors in the...

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Maxine Friend

Maxine Friend

Administrative Assistant Max makes sure the lab runs smoothly. In her spare time she likes to ride horses.

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Ben Walton

Ben Walton

Research Intern Ben is a fourth year biomedical engineering major at UMaine, Orono. Ben is working on integrating video and Peizo data for mouse feature extraction.

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Stephen Price

Stephen Price

Summer Student Program 2016 Stephen is a rising Senior at Phillips Exeter Academy who is passionate about mathematics and computer science. He is a two-time USA Junior Mathematics Olympiad qualifier and has had extensive experience competing on his school’s math team....

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Molly Herman

Molly Herman

Summer Student Program 2016 Molly will be a senior at American University majoring in neurosciences. This summer she is working on behavioral characterization of the hyperactive ENU mutant line Crichton.

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Luke Gehman

Luke Gehman

Summer Student  2015 Luke Gehman was a summer student working in Dr. Kumar's lab in 2015. Luke is interested in neurobiology, particularly the mesolimbic reward pathway and how it interacts with drugs such as cocaine. This summer, he is working with Dr. Kumar to...

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Kyungin Kim

Kyungin Kim

Kyungin was the Kumar Lab manager in 2015. He left for a PhD at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea. He returned as a post-doctoral fellow from 2019-2021. He is going to Cleveland Clinic for a second post-doc.

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