Scott Bolkan - After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in Human Biology with a concentration in Neuroscience at Stanford University, Dr. Bolkan went on to complete a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University in 2017. Working in the laboratories of Dr. Joshua Gordon and Dr. Christoph Kellendonk, he investigated how reciprocal circuitry interconnecting the mediodorsal thalamus and prefrontal cortex supports component processes of spatial working memory and othercognitive behaviors in mice. In 2017 he began post-doctoral research in the lab of Dr. Ilana Witten at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute where he is investigating the striatal substrates supporting working memory guided decision-making. Dr. Bolkan’s core research interest is to understand how local and distributed neural circuits contribute to component operations mediating cognitive behaviors. Towards this goal his work employs a variety of of tools for directly measuring andmanipulating neural activity in genetically defined neural populations, as well as computational techniques for the analysis of neural dynamics.