May 02, 2026 - Ruitao receives honors for his thesis work
Ruitao graduated with High Honors in Neuroscience and received the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience Director’s Award for his thesis. Congratulations, Ruitao!
Apr 27, 2026 - Graduation dinner to celebrate Ruitao and Saif
We celebrated our lab's graduating seniors by taking them out to dinner, along with their mentors/ close collaborators in the Mattis lab. Saif is a co-author on two recent manuscripts from the lab, based upon his innovative method for detecting seizures on long-term EEG recordings; he will be taking a gap year to broaden his clinical experience while he applies to medical school, and will continue his work in the lab, adapting his method for rapid/on-line seizure detection. Ruitao is a co-first author on the lab's recent publication characterizing hyperthermia-evoked seizures in a mouse FCD model, and will be a co-author on another paper in preparation for submission later this year; he will be moving to Georgia Tech for a PhD. We are grateful to them both for their contributions to the lab, and look forward to hearing great things as they move forward in their careers. Congratulations, Saif and Ruitao!
Apr 22, 2026 - Undergraduates present their research
Congratulations to Ruitao, Farah, and Sreyashi for their great posters, presented today across two undergraduate research symposia on campus! Ruitao presented his senior thesis work characterizing hyperthermia-evoked seizures in an FCD mouse model, corresponding with the recently accepted manuscript on which he is a co-first author. Farah presented her UROP project quantifying activation of serotonergic neurons in mice with differential risk of SUDEP -- and was awarded a Blue Ribbon Award for her poster! (Congrats, Farah!) Sreyashi presented her U@MNI project developing an analysis strategy for hierarchical data, which will be useful across multiple projects in the lab. It was great to see all of their hard work recognized!
Apr 20, 2026 - New publication by Xiaogang, Chandni, Ruitao, and team!The Mattis lab has a new publication,
Characterization and application of hyperthermia-evoked seizures in a mouse model of focal cortical dysplasia, now online in Neurobiology of Disease. We demonstrated that hyperthermia can be used to reliably evoke seizures in a mouse model of focal cortical dysplasia. We further demonstrated that this acute model has predictive validity, such that it can be used as a higher-throughput screening platform to identify therapeutics that also improve spontaneous interictal discharges and spikes. This work was led by Dr. Xiaogang Zhang, a visiting scholar, as well as Chandni Rana (PhD student) and Ruitao Shen (undergraduate student). We are thankful for collaborations with epilepsy colleagues Dr. Yu Wang, whose laboratory provided the FCD mice, and Dr. Patrick Lawlor, who contributed to EEG analysis.
Apr 19, 2026 - Joanna presents at the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics’ annual neurotech conference
Joanna gave an invited talk and chaired a session at SBMT's 23rd annual neurotech conference. The conference was also a reunion for Deisseroth lab alums!
