May 2024: Mona, Adema, Robert & Emily.
Adema Ribic, PhD
Principal Investigator
Born and raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Adema spent half of her childhood in safety shelters, and as a refugee of war in different places (and continents!). She completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Sarajevo, and specialized in Forensic Genetics at INGEB Sarajevo hoping to land a job with the International Committee on Missing Persons. Having no luck with that, she joined Max Planck Graduate Program in Molecular Biology in Germany instead, and later moved to USA for postdoc. At UVA, she initiated Hidden Figures: Neuroscience through Diversity and conjugate.blog (together with her husband, illustrator Eli Minaya) to help reduce the gender gap in Wikipedia. When she is not running (around) the lab, she can be found wrangling her twin sons and pets (a cat, a dog, and a bunch of chickens).
Education
Yale University/Tufts University
Postdoc in Neuroscience, 2019
German Primate Center
Postdoc in Neuroimmunology, 2010
University of Göttingen
PhD in Molecular Biology, 2009
University of Sarajevo
Diploma in Biology, 2005
Classes taught:
PSYC 3260/Hidden Figures: Neuroscience through Diversity
PSYC 4200/Neural Mechanisms of Behavior
EGMT 1520/HIS-stery of Science
Twitter Google Scholar ResearchGate OrcID CV
Robert Williams
Graduate Student
Previously a tech and a fellow in the Bridge to Doctorate Program at UVA, Robert is now a Ph.D. student in the Systems and Behavioral Neuroscience program in the Department of Psychology. As an undergraduate, he studied code-switching in different languages and dialects. He is currently trying to unravel how learning changes the brain and is very keen on decorating his office space (and skin…) with images of neurons in various forms. When he is not whispering to mice, he can be found running, enjoying classic films, and listening to music.
Education
University of Virginia
Ph.D. in Systems and Behavioral Neuroscience, 2022-present Bridge to the Doctorate, 2020-2021
Queens University of Charlotte
B.A. in Psychology, 2018; Byrum Scholar
Mona Fariborzi
Graduate Student
Mona is a Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Neurobiology of Behavior Program run jointly by the Departments of Psychology and Biology. During her undergrad at UCI, she studied the long-term effects of adolescent stress on the brain and behavior. In the Ribic Lab, she is interested in investigating visual processing and how different types of experience alter it. She can be found near the 2-photon imaging rig hunting for spines and being happy about finding them (repeatedly!). When she is not in the lab, she loves to cook and bake, and tends to her ever-growing indoor plant collection.
Education
University of Virginia
Ph.D. in Psychology, Quantitative Neurobiology of Behavior IDF, 2021-present; UVA Presidential Fellow ‘23/24
University of California Irvine
B.Sc. in Biological Sciences, 2021
Emily McCoy
Graduate Student
Emily is a Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Reintegrating the Phenotype Program run jointly by the Departments of Psychology and Biology. During her undergrad at St. Olaf, she studied properties of the vertebrate visual system including cone photoreceptor mosaics and retinal magnetoreception. She can be found near the ephys rig hunting for spikes, especially via optogenetics. Outside of the lab, she likes to work on her artistic hobbies like oil painting while listening to her favorite podcasts.
Education
University of Virginia
Ph.D. in Psychology, Reintegrating the Phenotype IDF, 2022-present
St. Olaf College
B.A. in Psychology, 2022
Lu Elbaum
Lab Tech/Undergraduate Researcher
Lu is a first year undergraduate student at UVA planning to major in Neuroscience. His research interests include neurodegenerative disorders and brain development. In the Ribic lab, he assists with all things mice, behavior, and electrophysiology. Outside of the lab, he plays violin in a quartet, snowboards in VASST, practices tennis, and enjoys drawing.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2027
Olivia Buell
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Emily)
Olivia is a second-year student at UVA hoping to major in neuroscience. Her research interests include brain development, neurolinguistics, and neuropharmacology. Outside of the lab, she rides on the club dressage team and is a member of Sigma Kappa sorority. In her free time, she loves reading, lifting, learning languages, and playing soccer.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2025
Astrid Ouazana
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Mona)
Astrid is a third-year student at UVA from Paris, majoring in Cognitive Science, pursuing the Neuroscience concentration, and in Psychology. She is interested in psychiatric disorders, child psychiatry, the biology behind human behavior, and how the human mind and its functions influence our personality, behavior, and perspective. In high school, she devoted her spare time to helping those in need by founding a platform named “Hotline: Just to Talk" for students to call anonymously and talk through any mental health related issue with a trained student. She also volunteered at the Montefiore School Health Program in the Bronx, NY, where she oversaw projects to increase awareness of cost-free mental and physical health programs for students in low-income neighborhoods. Before joining the Ribic Lab, Astrid gave time to a number of community service efforts, particularly with the club Autism Allies. In the Ribic Lab, she assists graduate student Mona Fariborzi hunt for spines to investigate how different types of experiences alter visual processing. Outside of the lab, she can be found reading, cooking, and discovering new music and new documentary films about neuroscience, psychology, and history.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2024
Alice Wu
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Mona)
Alice is a fourth-year student at UVA, majoring in Chemistry with a specialization in Biochemistry. Her research interests include visual learning and brain plasticity. In the lab, she works closely with Mona and has become quite the expert in immunohistochemistry and image analysis. Her work aims to understand how learning remodels dendritic spines in the visual cortex by quantifying their characteristics before and after learning. Furthermore she is validating the viral tools Mona uses by using an immunohistochemical approach. Outside of lab, Alice loves dancing and is a member of the ballroom dance club and Chinese traditional dance group. In her free time, she enjoys reading, drawing, and is a big fan of musicals.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2024
Madison Rehberg
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Mona)
Maddy is a first year undergraduate student at UVA, planning to major in Behavioral Neuroscience. She also plans to minor in ASL (American Sign Language), and is interested in visual processing and neurolinguistics, especially in the context of ASL. Inside the lab, she assists Mona by asking her a million questions a day and building her patience. Outside of the lab, she can be found reading, playing soccer, practicing ASL, or grabbing a coffee with her friends.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2027
Rachel Woods
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Emily)
Rachel is a first-year student at UVA, majoring in Biology. She is interested in neuropathology and neurocognitive disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. In the Ribic Lab, she assists graduate student Emily McCoy in studying the behavior of preterm mice. Outside of the lab, Rachel is a dedicated violinist in the Cavalier Symphony Orchestra. She is also an active member of UVA’s chapter of the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program, where she volunteers at chronic kidney disease health screenings in medically-underserved communities. In her free time, Rachel enjoys spending time with family and friends, playing pickleball, and listening to music.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2027
Charlie van den Oord
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Robert)
Charlie is a third-year student at UVA majoring in Biology and minoring in both Spanish and Statistics. He is interested in brain plasticity, sensory systems, and the effects of stress on behavior. Outside of the lab, he enjoys singing with his friends, losing to his roommates in Mario Kart, and lifting very small weights.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2025
Erica Lee
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Robert)
Erica is a second-year student at UVA majoring in Neuroscience. Her research interests include visual learning, brain plasticity, stress related disorders, and a variety of ocular disorders as well. In the lab she works with Robert and aims to understand if increased plasticity protects the brain from stress. Outside the lab, she can be found sparring in Kendo club, watching Kdramas, and cooking new recipes.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2026
Abigail Townes
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Robert)
Abby is a first-year student at UVA. She is interested in brain plasticity, neurolinguistics, and the effects of stress on behavior. Outside of the lab, Abby can be found playing tennis, reading dystopian novels, and studying at a local coffee shop. She is also a member of Alpha Omega Epsilon, a social and professional sorority for women in STEM at UVA.
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2027
Evelyn Hawkes
Undergraduate Researcher (Team Emily)
Evelyn is a third-year student at UVA from Cary, North Carolina, majoring in Cognitive Science with a concentration in Neuroscience. She is interested in any and all things pertaining to the mind including various psychiatric disorders, the neuroscience underlying criminal behavior, early brain development and its effects on personality, speech, and mental health, and the influence of genetic disorders on the brain. She also has a passion for language learning and international affairs and outreach. She speaks Spanish and is now learning Korean at UVA and hopes to add more languages to her repertoire. For her first two years at UVA, she was in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and was pursuing a major in Aerospace Engineering. She enjoyed her lab work in the Aeroelasticity Laboratory at Duke University over the summer in 2023 but realized that her passion was Neuroscience! She’ll always love math, the sky, and airplanes, but finds the human mind equally intriguing and complex. She works in the lab with Emily studying the effects of preterm birth on behavior and is thrilled to make new discoveries in this area while learning crucial lab techniques!
Education
University of Virginia
Expected: 2025
Zuko and Uma
Professional writing support
Zuko is an energetic Belgian Shepherd, keen to always bring out the best in Uma, the (currently) Great Dane Puppy. Both provide support during writing periods, usually in form of necessary distractions.