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,...

A warm welcome to Sebastian Martinez Rivera and Legna Rivera, undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico who are conducting...

Congratulations to rising senior Megan Wang, who won a poster award at the Boston Area Drosophila meeting on June 6, 2025. There were a...

Karla, Lewis, Nandashree, Megan and Nicholas all attended the 2025 Boston Area Drosophila Meeting held at UMass Boston, along with...

Dr. Tariq Brown officially received his PhD and was hooded on Sunday, May 25 at the Brown Commencement ceremony. The Kaun Lab got...

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