Dr. Bland earned her PhD student in the Ingraham Lab from 1998-2003. Now, she is appointed as an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia, Department of Pharmacology.

I graduated from University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras with a BS integrating Cellular and Molecular Biology and Neuropsychology prior to joining the UCSF Neuroscience PhD program. As an undergraduate in the lab of Dr. Alfredo Ghezzi, I studied the epigenetic interactions underlying neuroadaptive and behavioral responses to psychoactive drugs such as alcohol and ketamine in D. melanogaster. During this time, I collaborated with psychiatrist Dr. Frank H. Benítez-Cruz as Clinical Assistant to assess mental health patient care in Puerto Rican communities.

Jennay graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BS in Biology and worked in the Ingraham lab for 2 years. Jennay is currently exploring options to secure her dream job working in nature and ecology.

I received my PhD from the University of Helsinki, where I studied mitochondrial metabolism and identified metabolic stress responses that affect disease in mitochondrial myopathy patients. I was also able to apply bioinformatic approaches to identify non-coding regulatory elements that drive the expression of mtDNA replicating polymerase in the CNS and specific neuronal populations. After completing my studies, I was awarded an HFSP long-term fellowship to study with the Chawla lab in immunometabolism.

In the Ingraham lab, Candice asked how sex differences in the hypothalamus allocate energetic resources for bone metabolism. A more comprehensive understanding is needed to understand age-related bone diseases as well as the impact of transgender hormone therapy. Her prior and current training spans molecular and animal biology, cancer biology, nutritional sciences, and endocrinology. As a postdoctoral scholar, Candice collaborated with many distinguished labs at UCSF, Stanford, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley.

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a BA in the Molecular and Cell Biology Undergraduate program, I studied evolutionarily well-conserved developmental programs in the Weisblat lab using the segmented worm or leech as a model organism (Helobdella austinensis). Our goals in the lab were to define important regulatory genes and signaling pathways in the leech.

I completed both my undergraduate and graduate work at UC Merced, where I investigated how inappropriate activation of the renin-angiotensin system that controls blood pressure impacts pancreatic dysfunction and insulin resistance. After finishing my PhD studies, I joined the Ingraham’s lab and am now working on how kisspeptin (Kiss1) expressing neurons in the arcuate nucleus regulate energy homeostasis. I also have been awarded a 3 year NIGMS IRACDA Scholar fellowship.

The many roles estrogen plays in women’s physiology are the focus of my research. As an early researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I centered my research in understanding rapid estrogenic effects on the uterine vasculature. Dysfunction in the uterine vasculature is one of the components of Developmental origins of Health and Disease (DoHaD) hypothesis, given that dysfunction in early fetal development can lead to adult-on-set diseases such as obesity and type-2 diabetes.