We hosted the inaugural New England Addiction Neuroscience Research Conference at Brown University Friday August 15, 2025. The conference was organized by Dr. Danny Winder from UMass Chan Medical School and Dr. Karla Kaun with assistance from Dr. John Hernandez, Dr. Rebecca Oramas and Dr. Marie Doyle (postdoc in Winder Lab). We had a great turnout with over 100 attendees, and enduring enthusiasm from PIs and trainees alike. John gave a great talk during the Data Blitz that

Karla and Reza taught at the 2025 Drosophila Genetics and Genomics EMBO Practical course in Heidelberg August 4-8. Karla lectured about using Drosophila to perform behavior screens (covering genes and circuits), and Karla and Reza teamed up with Gilles Storelli from University of Heidelberg to teach practical lab exercises on Drosophila feeding and metabolism. Reza taught students how to perform optogenetic experiments to understand how manipulating taste and feeding neuro

The undergraduate students doing research in the lab this summer all presented their work at the Brown Summer Research Symposium on Thursday, July 31. A lot of work went into acquiring, analyzing and visualizing the data in these posters, and all of the students generated a lot of interest and did a fantastic job presenting. Vivian Chan presented ' Physiological and state-dependent mechanisms that regulate co-transmission ' Nicholas Olson presented ' Age variation impacts e

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...