News

Alyssa Easton Joins the Lab

Alyssa Easton recently joined the lab as a PhD student from the Molecular Engineering Program at the University of Washington. Alyssa is originally from Indiana, where she completed her BS in biological engineering at Purdue University. During her time at Purdue, Alyssa worked on gene dysregulation in aging photoreceptors with Dr. Hana Hall. She also interned at the SIBYLS Beamline at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to validate AI-predicted protein structures using Small Angle X-Ray Scattering.

For her PhD work, Alyssa will be co-advised by Abigail Schindler at VA Puget Sound. Alyssa will pursue research at the interface of aging, traumatic brain injury, inflammation, neurodegeneration, and the gut microbiome. In our lab, she will leverage large multi-omic human cohorts to look for mediation effects of the microbiome and inflammation on cognitive phenotypes (e.g., pain, anxiety, and depression). In the Schindler Lab, she will work with a mouse model of traumatic brain injury to uncover the molecular mechanisms driving accelerated aging after traumatic brain injury and whether or not the gut plays a role. We hope to identify common molecular mechanisms shared between the mouse and human systems.

Alyssa’s work will represent an exciting new direction for the lab, exploring the gut-brain axis in aging and brain injury through our collaboration with Dr. Schindler.

Recent Articles

  • 2024 Year in Review

    Reflecting on the past year, ISB has a lot to celebrate: groundbreaking research published in leading scientific journals, well-earned promotions, widespread media coverage, and more. Enjoy our year-in-review roundup highlighting some of the important, interesting, and impactful highlights of 2024.

  • My Digital Gut

    ISB Named Winner of 2024-2025 Amazon Web Services IMAGINE Grant for Nonprofits

    ISB has been selected as a winner of the 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant. The grant will support ISB’s continued development of My Digital Gut, an online decision-support platform that will help make microbiome-informed nutrition and healthcare personalized, predictive, and preventive. 

  • A Gut Feeling: Microbes and Their Impacts on Our Minds

    There has been an explosion of research into the two-way communication between the gut microbiota and the brain, which has helped us to understand complex behavioral and neurophysiological phenotypes in many animal species. This year, ISB hosted a virtual microbiome series dedicated to exploring the gut-brain axis.