curriculum vitae

Dr. Maria Antonietta Tosches studied developmental biology and neuroscience at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa in Italy. She earned her Ph.D. at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany, where she conducted research on the early evolution of nervous systems. As a postdoc at the Max PIanck Institute for Brain Research, she investigated the evolution of the cerebral cortex in turtles and lizards. In 2019 she became an Assistant Professor at Columbia University, in the Department of Biological Sciences, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2025.​

Jamie received her BS in Biochemistry from SUNY New Paltz in 2018. She previously worked in the Cellular Biology Department at Rutgers University as a research associate, working with zebrafish as models for neural development. She is currently working towards her Masters in Biotechnology as a graduate student at Columbia, and has been a member of the Tosches Lab since 2019.

​

​

​​​

​

​

NSF GRFP Fellowship

Eli graduated from McGill University in 2019 with a BA&Sc in Molecular Biology and Philosophy. He is currently a PhD candidate studying how cell types acquire new developmental roles throughout evolution.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Andrew Matheson earned his PhD studying the neural circuitry for olfactory navigation in Drosophila with Kathy Nagel at NYU in 2021. Prior to graduate school he earned a BSc in Computer Science and Biology at McGill University where he studied vocal communication in songbirds with Jon Sakata. In the lab he hopes to use comparative approaches to understand behavioural and circuit evolution.

​

​

​

​

​

Revson Foundation Postdoc fellowship

Giacomo studied biology at the University of Pavia, Italy and received a Master’s degree in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Milan, Italy in 2017. He obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK in 2023, working on the amphioxus nervous system and the origin of the brain in the lab of Dr Elia Benito-Gutiérrez. Giacomo is passionate about nervous system evolution and, in the Tosches lab, he is interested in reconstructing the evolution of cell type diversity in the vertebrate forebrain.

​

​

​

F31 Ruth L. Kirchenstein NRSA Fellowship (NINDS)

Nicholas is a doctoral student in the Tosches lab who is studying the neural organization and connectivity of sensory systems in Pleurodeles. Nicholas studied Neural Science at New York University. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 2016, Nicholas spent time in research positions at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Simons Foundation Center for Computational Neuroscience.

​

​

​

​

​​​​

Nedah earned her MSc in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, followed by research on the role of circadian rhythms on reward behavior in rats and on sleep behavior in drosophila. She earned her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on how scientists draw from lived experience to shape behavioral concepts. In the Tosches Lab, Nedah brings philosophy, history, and neuroscience into closer conversation by continuing to examine the many facets of model and tool use in behavioral experimentation, including the roles of researchers in their experiments.  

Tori received her B.A. in neuroscience and psychology from Williams College in 2022. She then worked for a year in the lab of Dr. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor at Columbia University studying phantom limb pain in a rodent model. She is currently a graduate student in the Tosches lab, in the Biological Sciences Program. She is interested in evolutionarily conserved neural circuits mediating innate and learned behaviors.

​​
​​​

Mayra grew up in Istanbul and graduated from Columbia University in 2024 with a B.A. in Neuroscience & Behavior and English. As an undergraduate, she worked at SCAN Lab under Prof. Kevin Ochsner researching social behavior and emotion regulation. At Tosches Lab, she is interested in delving into the biological methodologies of neuroscience and learning about neural regeneration and evolution. 

​

​

​

​​​

Lucia Del-Valle-Anton obtained her bachelor’s degree in biology from Complutense University of Madrid with a double major in neurobiology and clinical biology. She then received a master’s degree in neuroscience from Pierre and Marie Curie University.
She earned her PhD by studying progenitor cell types and lineages in mammals during cortical folding under the supervision of Dr. Victor Borrell at Instituto de Neurociencias Alicante in 2023. In the lab, she aims to study the chromatin landscape and cell-fate
decisions in progenitor cells in the context of brain regeneration. To achieve this, she plans to apply new single-cell bioinformatic analyses.​​​​

Pauline received her B.S. in Human Evolutionary Biology from Stony Brook University and then earned her double M.Sc. in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Groningen, Netherlands and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, working on the evolution of taste receptors in reptiles and the evolutionary adaptations for terrestrialization in invertebrates. Her research projects during this time and as a research assistant after graduation centered around the evolution of animal behaviors. She is now interested in studying the neuronal basis of behaviors and the evolution of the neural circuits regulating them.

Therese is an undergraduate researcher in the lab. She is completing her B.S. in biomedical engineering at Columbia. She is interested in how tissues repair themselves, and has been studying adult neurogenesis to look at this in the brain. Her work has been funded by Columbia's BUMP and SURF programs. Therese is interested in exploring new tools and techniques to bridge engineering and neuroscience.

​

​

​

​

Nevaeh Cruz is a current MS in Climate student with an Advanced Certification in Disaster Management. She previously received a BS in Environmental Science minoring in Biology. Her research interests are in invasive plant/animal species and understanding how climate change impacts biological systems and biodiversity!​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​