Chris is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Guohong Cui in the Neurobiology Laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and Dr. Michael Krashes at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Through his CCB Fellowship, he aims to determine how consumption of calorically dense foods, such as those high in fats, alters how hypothalamic and mesolimbic neurons respond to food and contribute to compulsive overeating.
Chris received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. For his dissertation, he worked under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Kash and used electrophysiology in combination with opto- and chemogenetics to investigate neural signaling pathways within the extended amygdala that contribute to anxiety-related behavior. As a postdoctoral researcher, he explores how dietary choices influence the activity of neurons regulating appetite and reward.