Congratulations to Assistant Professor (Research) Dr. John Hernandez, postdoctoral fellow Dr. Rebecca Oramas, MSc student Nelson Le, lab manager Reza Azanchi, lab alumni Nick Mei, collaborator Dr. Andrew Dacks and undergraduate members of his lab from West Virginia University and Case Western University for the recent publication of " Shaping of olfactory responses by taste in a new assay for operant learning in Drosophila melanogaster " in the Company of Biologists Journal o

Friday, December 5 was our Book Club and Annual Cookie Swap! We discussed Brave Genius by Sean Carroll and reflected on how important it is to understand how events in WWII impacted scientists in order to understand how current events are affecting scientists today. We had a wealth of treats on the table and guest cookie appearances as well! Dr. Tim Mosca from Thomas Jefferson University sent some freshly baked peanut-butter cup cookies for everyone to enjoy. And Nadine Now

Karla and Reza hosted lab members and their families that were around for the Thanksgiving holiday for Thanksgiving dinner at their place this year. We decorated gingerbread houses, then lamb, turkey and a plethora of vegetarian side dishes were served, and later John mediated a rousing game of the Werewolf.

Karla and first year NSGP student Amelia Harman attended the 2025 Society for Neuroscience Conference in San Diego November 15-19. They caught up on the latest in neurogenetics, addiction and synapse growth and formation and enjoyed catching up with friends and lab alumni and collaborator Kristin Scaplen at the IBANGS Breakfast. Highlights were a Meet-the-Expert talk by Daniel Colon-Ramos, A Taylor Swift-inspired talk on engrams by Sheena Josselyn, learning about new transmi

Lab Meeting October 31, 2025 was in homage to Halloween as we all decorated pumkpins while updating everyone on our projects. Exchange student Matthew Kim (a graduate student visiting from Marla Sokolowski's lab at the University of Toronto) treated us all to Buffalo chicken dip, and we welcomed Pathobiology graduate student Nola Ihejirika as she completed her first week of her rotation in the lab.

Postdoctoral associate Dr. Lewis Sherer presented his work at the 9th Northeast Glenn Foundation Symposium on the Biology of Aging held at UConn Health on October 24, 2025. Lewis presented a collaborative project between our lab and the labs of Dr. Tara White and Dr. Carolina Haass-Koffler . This work demonstrates that in humans and flies, the alpha1 receptor is reduced with age. Lewis demonstrated that this reduction plays a causal role in the efficacy of blood-pressure m

The Kaun Lab is hiring new full-time Research Assistants! The position is ideal for someone interested in investigating how changes in gene regulation impact individual variation in addictive substance use. We are interested in people at all levels of experience but you must have a Bachelor's degree and some experience working in a laboratory. This includes: 1) someone who just graduated with their undergrad degree and is looking for a 2 year research experience ('Grade 7'),

Congratulations to Assistant Professor (Research) Dr. John Hernandez who was just awarded his first grant as a Principal Investigator! This COBRE Center for Nervous System Pilot award provides $100,000 for John to investigate the mechanisms through which stress impacts motivation for alcohol self-administration. The lab is very exciting to see what interesting findings emerge from this new research direction. Well done John!

Karla gave a talk on 'The Functional Consequences of Alternative Splicing on Polysubstance Use', a collaborative project between the Kaun lab and O'Connor-Giles Lab, at the 2025 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting October 7-11, 2025. It was fantastic catching up with brilliant friends and learning all the latest in the field.

Investigating pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder using Drosophila melanogaster

Karla attended the 2025 National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Genetics and Epigenetics Cross-Cutting Research Meeting at the NIH...

Every year the last week of August brings everyone together in two graduate program retreats. Our lab tries to attend both retreats as...

We hosted the inaugural New England Addiction Neuroscience Research Conference at Brown University Friday August 15, 2025. The...

Karla and Reza taught at the 2025 Drosophila Genetics and Genomics EMBO Practical course in Heidelberg August 4-8. Karla lectured about...

The undergraduate students doing research in the lab this summer all presented their work at the Brown Summer Research Symposium on...

Kaun Lab Annual Retreat at Colt State Harbor, Bristol, RI

Karla, Reza, Aryana and Lewis from the Kaun Lab visited lab alumnus Dr. Kristin Scaplen at her lab at Bryant University on Wednesday, July 10. It was fantastic seeing such a productive undergraduate and technician powered research lab, and fantastic to see all the great behavior assays that the Scaplen Lab is using to understand the circuit basis of alcohol preference.

A warm welcome to Sebastian Martinez Rivera and Legna Rivera, undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico who are conducting research in the laboratory through a Dana Foundation Summer Research Internship. Sebastian and Legna are working with Dr. Kaun to help identify how pervasive eugenic principles have impacted how psychiatric diseases like alcohol and substance use disorder are portrayed in the scientific literature and media. Their goal this summer is to help

Congratulations to rising senior Megan Wang, who won a poster award at the Boston Area Drosophila meeting on June 6, 2025. There were a lot of amazing posters at the meeting, and Megan out-competed graduate students and postdocs to win her poster award. Megan will be working full time in the lab this summer through an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award.

Karla, Lewis, Nandashree, Megan and Nicholas all attended the 2025 Boston Area Drosophila Meeting held at UMass Boston, along with members of the Wharton, Larschan and O'Connor-Giles labs. It was a fantastic meeting, with Rachel Wilson giving the Keynote seminar. A special congratulations to Megan for winning a poster award for her undergraduate work!

Dr. Tariq Brown officially received his PhD and was hooded on Sunday, May 25 at the Brown Commencement ceremony. The Kaun Lab got together for a casual get-together to celebrate Tariq's amazing accomplishments and to wish him well as he moves onto his postdoctoral work with Dr. Toshi Hige at the University of North Carolina. Congrats Tariq!

Kaun Lab members Karla Kaun, Reza Azanchi, John Hernandez and Lewis Sherer joined Kaun lab alumni and collaborators Emily Petruccelli and Kristin Scaplen for the International Behaviour and Neural Genetics annual Genes, Brains & Behavior meeting in Fiji May 19-23 . Karla presented a talk in the ' Mechanisms underlying individual variation in motivated behavior' symposium and John and Lewis gave data blitz talks.

Spring always brings with it the feeling of a new and fresh start. The Lab celebrated Spring this year with a spring cleaning of our bad...

We wish a warm welcome to Ari Bouchie, our newest research assistant! Ari completed her BSc in Biology at Roger Williams University where...

We are lucky to have PhD Candidate Nadine Nowag working with us from February through May, 2025. Nadine joins us from the Universitat...

The Kaun Lab at the 66th Annual Drosophila Research Conference

Members of the Kaun Lab including MSc student Sam Stea and postdoctoral associate Dr. Nandashree Kasturacharya participated in the 2025...

Congratulations to Dr. Tariq Brown who successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Alcohol-Induced Plasticity within Dopaminergic...

Neuroscience graduate student Tariq Brown and Dr. Karla Kaun were highlighted in News from Brown today! Alcohol, a laser light show,...

A Case for Science Advocacy

Science brings hope

We enjoyed many different types of sweets and cookies this year during our Annual Cookie/Sweet Swap while we discussed our Book Club book...

Welcome to the lab new Postdoctoral Associate Dr. Nandashree Kasturacharya! Nandashree recently completed her Ph.D. working with Dr....

Microscopy completed by graduate student Tariq Brown was highlighted in Brown News today in the article " How a shared super-resolution...

Dr. Rebecca Oramas was recently highlighted in the "From the Desk of the Dean: News and information from Mukesh K. Jain, MD Senior Vice...

In a recent article about Innovation Awards offered by the Carney Institute for Brain Science entitled " Return on a decade of innovation...

Members of the Kaun Lab attended and had a wonderful time at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in Chicago, October 5-9, 2024 ....

Welcome to rotation student Daniela Garrod! Daniela is a PhD student in the National Institute of Health (NIH) Graduate Partnership...

We are delighted to welcome three new undergraduates to the Kaun Lab: Nicholas Olson, Vivian Chan and Amelia Wieland. They are joining...

I train students who have been accepted into the the  Neuroscience Grad program  and  MCB Grad program . If you are someone that enjoys...

On September 19, members of the Kaun Lab spent the day at Colt State Park, where thy gave chalk talks about their work, had a lively...

A huge congratulations to collaborator (and lab alumni) Dr. Kristin Scaplen from Bryant University for being awarded a NIH Academic...

A belated welcome to Post-bacculearreate Research Education Program student Amelia Harman. Amelia joined Dr. Kate O'Connor-Giles lab to...

Welcome new graduate student Sam Stea! Sam is conducting his Master's in Biotechnology at Brown University and joins us with expertise in...

Welcome to new Research Assistant Brenna Levesque! Brenna recently completed her Master's of Science in Cell and Molecular Biology at the...

We are looking for a research assistant interested in the functional implications of co-transmission to join our team! This position...

A belated Congratulations to lab undergraduate researcher Miauxochitl Haskie who graduated with a B.Sc . in Biology, with a focus on...

Members of the Kaun Lab spent time at the RI Audubon Nature Center  for the 2024 Neuroscience Graduate Program  retreat and 2024...

Congratulations to Dr. John Hernandez who was selected to speak in the NYU Neuroscience Institute's Seminars from Postdocs in...

Congratulations to postdoctoral associate Dr. Lewis Sherer for being awarded a two-year fellow position on the Brown University Center...