Current Lab Members

Jacqueline Barker, PhD

Principal Investigator

she/her/hers

Jacqui earned her BA in Psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University. She completed her PhD in Neuroscience at Yale University, in the lab of Jane Taylor before moving to the Medical University of South Carolina to complete her postdoctoral training with Judson Chandler. Jacqui started her lab in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine in the fall of 2017.

Katie is completing her PhD with the Neuroscience PhD Program at the Drexel University College of Medicine. Her work in the lab focuses on ventral hippocampal circuits in the regulation of behavioral flexibility.

Lauren completed her Master's in Neuroscience in 2018 where she developed expertise in the use of mouse models to investigate neural function.

Christina completed her Masters in 2020 in biology with a concentration in neurobiology at Rutgers-Camden where her work explored circuitry involved in spatial memory utilizing a teleost model. In the Barker lab, she is expanding her work to investigate changes in behavioral response associated with low-dose ethanol exposure.

Laura Giacometti, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar

she/her/hers

Laura completed her PhD with Dr. Ramesh Raghupathi in 2018, where her dissertation focused on sex differences in long term behavioral alterations following adolescent mild traumatic brain injury. She is building on her expertise in sex differences to investigate sex-specific effects of chronic ethanol exposure on astrocyte activity and its role in regulating reward seeking and depression-related behaviors.

llk34@drexel.edu

Yue Lu

Master's student, Drug Discovery and Development

Yue is a 3+2 coop student between China Pharmaceutical University and Drexel University, currently completing her Master's in Drug Discovery & Development. Her background in food and nutrition at CPU has facilitated her transition to studying reward seeking in rodent models in the Pharmacology & Physiology Department.

Mitch completed his PhD with Dr. James Barrett in 2020, where his dissertation focused on the effects of peripheral nerve injury and gabapentin on cortical pain processing. His postdoctoral work will focus on the interaction between chronic pain and substance use disorders.

man83@drexel.edu

Sam Stine

Master's student, Pharmacology and Physiology

she/her/hers

Sam completed her BS in Psychology at The University of the South and is working on her Master's degree in the Pharmacology & Physiology program with a research interest in drug use and behavior.

Michelle is a medical student at Drexel University College of Medicine who joined the lab as part of the T-32 NeuroAIDS Summer Research Training Fellowship. Her research focus is on the combined effects of cocaine exposure and HIV on astrocytes immunoreactivity in mouse models of HIV infection.

Qiaowei Xie, MS

PhD Student, Pharmacology and Physiology

Qiaowei has returned to the lab to complete her PhD in Pharmacology and Physiology. Her research focus is neural circuit dysregulation in preclinical models of HIV.

Undergraduate Researchers

Kelsey Chandran

Kelsey is a Junior premedical Global Studies major at Drexel who joined the lab in 2019 as an undergraduate STAR scholar. This program funds first year students to participate in faculty-mentored research, scholarship, or creative work during the summer after their freshman year. After Kelsey’s undergraduate career, she plans on pursuing medical school.

Drexel STAR Program

Juliette DiFlumeri

Juliette is a senior premedical chemical engineering (chemistry minor) student at Widener University with an interest in the neurobiological basis of compulsive and addiction driven behavior (including the etiology of OCD and comorbid depression), and an interest in cancer immunotherapy. She plans to attend medical school after undergrad and a gap year.

Drexel Office of Undergraduate Research

Binay Singh

Binay is a junior undergraduate at Drexel University majoring in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in Neuroengineering. After graduation he hopes to get his masters in Neuroscience.

Drexel Co-Op Program