Courtney Glavis-Bloom, Ph.D. graduated with a B.A. in Cognitive Science in 2004 from Yale University. In 2010, she earned her Ph.D. in Psychology: Neuroscience and Animal Behavior from Emory University, where she studied the effects of neonatal damage to the hippocampus on spatial and contextual memory. She then spent 8 years in the pharmaceutical industry where she evaluated the effectiveness of pro-cognitive drugs. Courtney’s research at Salk is focused on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of aging, the biggest risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Michael Thornton, Ph.D. completed a B.S. in Psychobiology at UCLA in 2012 and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus in 2023. His graduate work focused on in vivo structural and functional imaging of neurons and glia – with an emphasis on oligodendrocytes and regeneration in demyelinating disorders. He joined the lab in 2024 to work on collaborative projects with Drs. Rusty Gage and Lyle Muller studying the dynamics of network-level spatiotemporal activity patterns in biological neural networks using high-density microelectrode arrays.

Kabir Arora is an undergraduate student at UC San Diego studying Neurobiology. He is interested in studying the relationship between neuronal mechanisms and their effect on emergent cognitive processes. At Salk his work uses computational methods to analyze electron microscopy images, trying to find correlates between aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s.