Fast Track Master's Graduate Students




Katie Copelas
UMass Amherst, 2020, BS Biology, BS Psychology (Neuroscience Track)
Research Interests: Circuitry behind maternal behavior in mother rats in an effort to identify subregions of and evaluate recruitment of offspringresponsive populations of the medial preoptic area that project to the infralimbic cortex and the ventral tegmental area during maternal caregiving behavior.

Bryan Dec
B.S in Biology at UMass Amherst 2020
Research Interests: I research a sensorimotor gating circuit using electrophysiological field recordings and Immunohistochemistry

Kelly Fischer
BS in Biochemistry and molecular biology, UMass Amherst
Research Interests: I am interested in deepening our understanding of decision making in the nudibranch sea slug Berghia stephanieae through the use of chemical cues and the animal's olfactory system and a new rapid behavioral assay

Charles Gualtieri
Research Interests: Interested in uncovering the neural circuits underlying social behavior in animal models. Currently using fiber photometry and advanced genetic techniques to uncover the social behavior network.


Ani Maroyan
BS in Psychology, minor in Biology, UMass 2020
Research Interests: Understanding the olfactory navigation of Berghia stephanieae when their olfactory organs are severed and allowed to regenerate.

Catherine McEachern
B.S. Psychology, University of Massachusetts Amherst '19
Research Interests: Interested in studying the quantified measure of chronic stress in people who have survived severe diseases (i.e. cancer, Lyme Disease, etc.) via extraction of cortisol from hair and nail samples.