Openings
The Meeks Lab has an open postdoctoral research position to study chemosensory information processing in the mouse accessory olfactory system. Though we are rooted in a deep appreciation for careful, quantitative science, we also encourage enthusiasm and creativity in the laboratory. The position will be funded by both short- and long-term grants from the NIH (NIDCD and NINDS) and the Welch Foundation. If you are interested, please send an e-mail along with a list of 2 or more references (e-mail located on my profile on the home page).
News
August 2017: Thanks very much Anish Reddy for your help in designing new devices for us to expand our research! Have a great Sophomore year at UT Austin!
June 2017: Hillary's paper has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Neuroscience! Congrats Hillary and thank you Marina for your contribution! Hillary's paper.
April 2017: The Meeks Lab has officially contributed to the Open Science community. Hillary's first paper, entitled "Experience-dependent plasticity in accessory olfactory bulb interneurons following male-male social interaction" is now posted on bioRxiv!
January 2017: We want to extend a very warm welcome to Wen Mai "Lisa" Wong, the Meeks Lab's newest Ph.D. graduate student. Welcome, Wen Mai!
January 2017: Happy New Year! We started 2017 off with a "bang" as we received word that Wayne's paper on noradrenaline's impact on mitral cell spontaneous activity and sensory tuning was accepted at the Journal of Neurophysiology! Link: PubMed. Congrats Wayne on a very nice study!
December 2016: Big news, everyone: the Meeks Lab is now funded by an R01 from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). This grant will fund the lab through 2021! Many thanks to all in the lab that poured their blood, sweat, and tears into making this happen!
November 2016: The Meeks Lab was well represented at SFN2016, where Hillary and Wayne both presented their work in a Nanosymposium entitled "Olfaction: Sensation and Second-Order Representation. Both Hillary and Wayne did amazingly well in their presentations, making us all very proud. I was very excited and honored to be the session Co-chair along with my colleague Fabio Papes.
September 2016: I was excited to be able to present Hillary's work at ECRO 2016 in Athens, Greece. Athens was an incredible place to participate in a scientific conference. Nightly walks around the base of the Acropolis and fun day trips to the Greek National Archaeological Museum and the Temple of Poseidon were especially breathtaking. Thanks to Marc Spehr and Yoram Ben-Shaul, who organized the session on accessory olfactory bulb physiology!
August 2016: We want to wish Natasha Browder all the best as she continues her education at Georgia State as a postbaccalaureate student. Natasha did excellent work helping with our mouse colony and establishing new methods for assessing self-initiated rodent behaviors towards new pheromones.
June 2016: Big news, everyone! Wayne's paper reporting the discovery of bile acids as natural ligands of the accessory olfactory system has been published in Nature Communications! Amazing job and team effort (by almost everyone in the lab) in bringing this paper to publication!
Doyle et al. 2016 Contact Us
Simmons Biomedical Research Building (NB)
6000 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, Texas 75390-9111
Phone: 214-648-1314
Fax: 214-648-1801
Email
June 2016: Welcome to the lab, Anish Reddy! Anish is a biomedical engineering major at UT Austin and will be working on light sheet imaging of Ca2+ signals in neurons. We are looking forward to a fun, productive summer!
June 2016: Welcome to the lab, Afza Mohammed! Afza is a high school student from Jack E. Singley Academy in Irving, TX. She is participating in the UTSW STARS Program this summer and we are excited to have her in the lab!
April 2016: Congrats to Wayne for winning a Travel Scholarship from Fine Science Tools to attend SfN 2016 this Fall!
November 2015: Hillary did a wonderful job presenting her poster at SFN 2015 in Chicago!
August 2015: We welcome the two newest members of the Meeks Lab: Natasha Browder (Research Technician) and Jie Cao, Ph.D. (Research Associate)! Looking forward to doing some great work with you!
August 2015: Best wishes to Salma, who is moving to Atlanta with her family to start a new chapter of her life and career!
July 2015: Welcome to the lab, Daniel Dinh! Daniel will be working jointly between our lab and the Roberts Lab on the NSF BRAIN EAGER project.
May 2015: Congratulations to Hillary for winning a Travel Scholarship from Fine Science Tools to attend SfN this Fall.
May 2015: Congratulations to Wayne for winning a Travel Award from the UT Southwestern GSO (UTSW GSO)!
April 2015: Great job presenting your posters at AChems 2015, Hillary and Wayne!
March 2015: Best wishes to Marina, who is moving back to her hometown of Ufa, Russia, to pursue the next chapter of her life and career. We will miss you dearly, Marina!
February 2015: Congratulations to Hillary for winning Honorable Mention for her poster at the GSO Poster Fair. Don't spend the prize money all in one place!
September 2014: Julian and his wife Regina are new parents! Welcome to the world, Gwendolyn "Winnie" and Allen Meeks!
August 2014: We recently received word that a collaborative BRAIN EAGER application to the National Science Foundation has been awarded! The grant, on which Julian is co-PI with Todd Roberts, Genevieve Konopka, and Tae-Kyung Kim, seeks to develop new tools for studying social learning and neural circuit plasticity. Marina had a beautiful set of images selected in one of the Press Releases from the NSF. Congrats Marina!
July 2014: Julian was invited to give a seminar at the National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) as part of a symposium on career choices for NINDS summer interns. The talk was later posted to YouTube.
July 2014: We are excited to welcome Salma Ferdous to the lab! Salma is a recent graduate of UT Austin and will work in the lab as a research technician on various projects. Welcome to the lab, Salma!
June 2014: Julian was interviewed for a "People Behind the Science" podcast. The show's mission is to "inspire other scientists and future scientists, share the different paths to a successful career in science, educate the general population on what scientists do, and show the human side of science."
March 2014: We are excited to announce the Meeks Lab’s upcoming first independent publication in the Journal of Visualized Experiments. Wayne Doyle and Gary Hammen from the lab of Tim Holy, at Washington University in St. Louis, helped set up the first systematic visualization of the unique ex vivo protocol Julian developed as a postdoc with Dr. Holy. The video shoot was quite an experience.
Wayne and Julian as they work on a difficult-to-shoot part of the procedure. September 2013: We are now seeking to hire a motivated postdoctoral fellow to work on mechanisms of neural circuit function in the accessory olfactory system. See above for details.
April 2013: We are sad to say goodbye to Jennifer – who helped the lab grow and become organized in her brief time here. Good luck in your new master’s program, Jennifer.
March 2013: The Meeks Lab welcomes Wayne Doyle to the team. He will study information processing in the accessory olfactory bulb for his Ph.D. thesis.
January 2013: We are so happy to have Hillary Cansler joining us! She will study the mechanisms of AOS plasticity for her Ph.D. thesis.
August 2012: The Meeks Lab welcomes Jennifer Torres and Marina Maksimova.
April 2012: The Meeks Lab is now open for business!