Hosted by Julius Zhu, Lesley Colgan, PhD, is a Research Fellow, Neuronal Signal Transduction, Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, Jupiter, FL

Dr. Lesley Colgan joined the Yasuda lab as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2011 at Duke University, and moved with the lab to the Max Planck Florida Institute in June 2012. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of neuronal plasticity. Specifically, she has developed highly-sensitive optical sensors for protein kinase C (PKC) isozymes in order to understand the role of PKC in the neural correlates of learning and memory.

Dr. Colgan earned her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Neuroscience in the lab of Dr. Edwin Levitan, where she studied the trafficking and activity-dependent function of vesicular neurotransmitter transporters. She continued her research at the University of Pittsburgh as a postdoctoral fellow to image neurotransmitter release directly, through three-photon microscopy. This work established the release of serotonin from dendrites in the dorsal raphe nucleus and described its regulation.