2025 Stanford Neurosciences IDP Student Retreat

October 24-26, 2025

Group Photo, November 2024 Retreat

Meetings & Lodging at Asilomar Conference Grounds 800 Asilomar Ave, Pacific Grove, CA 93950

IDP Students and Faculty - Registration is Closed

 

Questions? 

Contact: Amanda Rashid (aarashid@stanford.edu)

Speakers

Robin Nusslock, Ph.D.

Dr. Robin Nusslock is a Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Training at Northwestern University. His research program integrates neuroscience and clinical science to better understand the emotional brain in both health and disorder. Using neurophysiology and structural and functional neuroimaging, his work examines how brain systems generate positive and negative emotions and how these processes are regulated by the prefrontal cortex. He translates these findings to study the neural mechanisms underlying depression, anxiety, addiction, and mania. His research also explores how stress impacts emotion-related brain systems and how bidirectional communication between the brain and the immune system shapes risk and resilience for mental and physical health problems.

Steven Sloan, MD, Ph.D.

Dr. Steven Sloan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine and a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute. He earned both his MD and PhD from Stanford University. Dr. Sloan’s laboratory studies human astrocyte development, focusing on the mechanisms that drive astrocyte maturation. His team is particularly interested in glioblastoma as a model of abnormal astrocyte development and is exploring synthetic drivers of astrocyte maturation as potential therapeutic strategies for these tumors.

Laura Seeholzer, Ph.D.

Dr. Laura Seeholzer is a faculty member in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University, where she began in 2025. Her research explores how the body detects, perceives, and responds to internal sensations, with a focus on airway reflexes like coughing and sneezing. By studying specialized epithelial cells and their communication with the nervous system, her lab investigates how these processes shape conscious awareness, reflex control, and disease, including conditions such as chronic cough and aspiration.

Bradley Voytek, Ph.D.

Dr. Bradley Voytek is a Professor in Cognitive Science, the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, and the Neurosciences Graduate Program at UC San Diego. A Sloan and Kavli Neuroscience Fellow, he is a founding faculty member of UCSD’s Data Science Institute and Undergraduate Data Science program. After earning his PhD at UC Berkeley, he was Uber’s first data scientist, helping shape their data strategy. His research uses large-scale data science and machine learning to study brain communication and how it changes with aging and disease. He is also an advocate for public science education, speaking widely to students about the joys of research and discovery.

Ryann Fame, PhD.

Dr. Ryann Fame is a neurobiologist with a deep interest in neural development, cerebrospinal fluid dynamics, and cellular metabolism. She joined the faculty at Stanford University in 2022. Dr. Fame earned her undergraduate degree in Biology and Chemistry from the College of William and Mary, followed by a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University. She pursued postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT and in the Department of Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her research lab focuses on the early neural stem cell niche, neural tube closure, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biology, metabolic regulation, and cortical neuronal development.

Shawn Dhillon, Neuroscience Ph.D. Student

Shawn Dhillon is a Neuroscience Ph.D. student in Stanford University’s Neurosciences Interdepartmental Program (Neuro IDP). He conducts his research in the Lewis Laboratory, which investigates the mechanisms that generate and regulate calcium signals and their impact on cell behavior. Shawn’s work focuses particularly on store-operated calcium channels, exploring their critical cellular functions and the unique properties that underlie their activation.

Agenda

Friday, October 24

  • 4:00 pm Hotel Check-In Begins
  • 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm Dinner Available (Crocker Dining Hall)
  • 7:00 pm Speaker Dinner for Invited Guests (Speakers, Retreat Reps, Co-Directors, Speaker Hosts)
  •  

Saturday, October 25

  • Sessions Held in Heather Room, Meals in Crocker Dining Hall
  • 7:30 - 9:00 am Breakfast 
  • 9:00 am Event Welcome
  • 9:15 - 9:45 am Speaker: Ryann Fame, "Keeping the Brain Afloat"
  • 9:45 - 9:50 am Q&A
  • 9:50 - 10:20 am Speaker: Robin Nusslock, "How Stress Gets Under the Skin: A Neuroimmune Network Hypothesis”
  • 10:20 - 10:25 am Q&A
  • 10:25 - 10:40 am Break
  • 10:40 - 11:10 am Speaker: Steven Sloan, "Organoids, Glia, and Serendipity"
  • 11:10 - 11:15 am Q&A
  • 11:15 - 11:45 am Speaker: Shawn Dhillon, “CRACing Open Orai1 Gating: Optical Single Channel Recordings”
  • 11:45 - 11:50 am Q&A 
  • 11:50 - 12:00 pm Group Photo Outside Hearst Social Hall
  • 12:00 - 1:00 pm Lunch 
  • 1:15 - 2:15 pm DEIB & MHC Students Session (Students only)
  • 2:15 - 6:00 pm Break: Explore Asilomar - Access to Beach, Volleyball, Games in Social Hall, Skit Prep, Crafts in Heather Room, etc.
  • 6:00 - 8:00 pm Dinner and Skits near Crocker Dining Hall, Woodlands North & South
  • 8:00 - 10:00 pm Bonfire & Smores

Sunday, October 26

Sessions Held in Heather Room, Meals in Crocker Dining Hall

7:30 - 9:00 am Breakfast

9:00 - 9:30 am Pack Up & Check-Out (Hearst Social Hall)

9:30 - 10:00 am Speaker: Bradley Voytek, "How we quantify our neural data constrains our models and theories"

10:00 - 10:30 am Speaker: Laura Seeholzer, “The Anatomy of an Urge: Tracing Airway Sensation from Cells to Circuits"

10:30 - 10:40 am Q&A

10:40 am - 10:55 am Break 

10:55 - 11:55 am Faculty Panel

11:55 - 12:00 pm Closing Remarks

12:00 - 1:00 pm Lunch & Departures After