Marin Furukuwa’s path to epilepsy research began with a personal diagnosis that sparked a deeper curiosity about her own health. After joining UC Riverside as a freshman in fall 2024, Furukuwa quickly connected with Viji Santhakumar’s research lab — a decision that would profoundly shape her academic and career goals.
The story of how one chemistry teacher— Michelle Hampton—at Riverside Unified School District’s (RUSD) Martin Luther King High School (MLK) reached out to faculty at UC Riverside with an idea of giving her chemistry students practical experience in a bona fide research lab exemplifies the old idiom: nothing ventured, nothing gained. But in this case...
The American Epilepsy Society, or AES, has awarded Francisco Javier Guevara-Pantoja, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Riverside, a $50,000 fellowship to investigate in mice the activity of inhibitory neurons in the dentate gyrus during the initiation and termination of seizures.
The gene neuropilin2 encodes a receptor involved in cell-cell interactions in the brain and plays a key role in regulating the development of neural circuits.
The more than $2.3 million five-year renewal grant will allow Santhakumar’s lab to study how inflammatory responses after brain injury contribute to the creation of abnormally connected neurons, and whether this compromises critical memory processing functions.
Study form the Santhakumar Lab identifies the role played by an immune signaling molecule in regulating memory function in the normal and injured brain
