Alex Whitebirch is a PhD candidate currently in Steve Siegelbaum’s laboratory in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University in New York City, NY. He received his undergraduate degree in biology from the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon in 2013. Over the course of his graduate research Alex has studied the neural circuitry of the mouse hippocampus, with a focus on the on the understudied CA2 subfield. His dissertation research utilizes electrophysiology, immunohistochemistry, confocal microscopy, and behavioral assays to explore pathological alterations to CA2 circuits in a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy with mesial hippocampal sclerosis. In 2017 Alex received an honorable mention from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Training Program, and in 2019 he was awarded a graduate research fellowship though the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award.
