WVU CN Welcomes Three New Faculty Members

Andrew Dacks, PhD: Andrew Dacks joined WVU and the Center for Neuroscience in January 2013 as an Assistant Professor in the WVU Department of Biology.  Dr. Dacks received his PhD in Insect Science at the University of Arizona, after which he was a Postdoctoral Excellence in Research and Teaching fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Alan Nighorn at the University of Arizona.  He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Klaudiusz Weiss.  His research focuses on the mechanisms by which the nervous system integrates the physiological state into the encoding of sensory information.  His lab uses neuroanatomy, electrophysiology and behavioral assays with a variety of invertebrate models to study neuromodulation of olfactory processing.  Dr. Dacks’ goal is to elucidate basic principles of neuroscience with the rationale that by understanding features fundamental to nervous system function in all organisms, we can understand how more complex nervous systems go awry. Welcome to WVU, Dr. Dacks!
 
 
Elizabeth Kyonka, PhD: Elizabeth Kyonka joined the Center for Neuroscience in 2013. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Behavior Analysis program in the WVU Department of Psychology since 2009. Dr. Kyonka received her PhD in Psychology in 2009 from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and was funded by a postgraduate fellowship from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Her research focuses on the experimental research on intertemporal choice and temporal learning in dynamic environments, and seeks to answer the following questions: How do humans and other animals learn what to do and when to do it? Critically, what do we need in order to adapt successfully when conditions change? By explicitly identifying the behavioral mechanisms involved in behavioral plasticity and factors that facilitate or impede it, Dr. Kyonka hopes her research will have positive impacts for public conservation, education, and financial systems. Some of Dr. Kyonka’s students’ research projects include response requirements and temporal learning; animal models of gambling; adaptive forgetting in temporal learning; choice and timing dynamics; and deck- and trial-based performance in difference iterations of the Iowa Gambling Task. In addition to her roles in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Neuroscience, Dr. Kyonka also serves as the secretary for the Society for the Quantitative Analyses of Behavior; on the Board of Directors for the Southeastern Association for Behavior Analysis, where she served as Program Chair in 2012; and on the Board of Editors for the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. Welcome to the CN, Dr. Kyonka!
 
Gary Marsat, PhD: Gary Marsat joined WVU and the Center for Neuroscience in January of 2013, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology. Dr. Marsat received his PhD in Biology from McGill University, where he studied systems-level neurophysiology of invertebrate audition, with Dr. G. S. Pollack. He went on to complete two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Ottawa; the first in the Center for Neural Dynamic, where he studied neurophysiology of cells, circuits, and sensory systems under the direction of Dr. L. Maler, and the second in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine and the Department of Physics, where he studied computational neuroscience and systems neuroscience with Drs. A Longtin and L. Maler. Dr. Marsat’s lab at WVU focuses their research on computational neuroscience and systems neuroscience of communication. Dr. Marsat seeks to understand the neural code, what mechanism it relies on, and how it participates in behavioral fitness. The Marsat Lab uses a combination of in vivo electrophysiology, computational neuroscience tools, behavioral assays, and pharmacological manipulations. Welcome, Dr. Marsat!