Reissner Lab | People

Principal Investigator

Kate Reissner, PhD

Principal Investigator
Email: kreissne@email.unc.edu

Kate received a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Duke University and a PhD from the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at UC Irvine, where she studied in the lab of Tom Carew. Following postdoctoral research in the lab of Peter Kalivas at the Medical University of South Carolina, Kate joined the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Neuroscience Curriculum as an Assistant Professor in 2013. Kate accepts graduate students both through the Behavioral and Integrative Neuroscience (BIN) Program in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience as well as through the Biological and Biomedical Science Program (BBSP) Neuroscience Program.

Lab Members

Anze Testen

Graduate Student
Email: anze_testen@med.unc.edu

Anze is an international student who came to UNC-CH from Slovenia. There he did his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biology and Molecular biology, respectively. For his MSc thesis he studied dynamics and consequences of interactions between nanoparticles and biological surfaces. Before joining the graduate program at UNC, he spent a year as a research assistant in Professor Oliver Smithies’ lab at UNC studying kidney filtration models and developing new in-house made nano-tools for it. After being accepted into the UNC Biological and Biomedical Science Program (BBSP) he decided for an early career change and picked up his semi-secret love, GLIALscience. In the Reissner lab, Anze strives to better understand astrocyte morphology and function under normal and drug-induced conditions using viral injections, confocal imagining, in-vivo endoscopy and computer modeling.

Emily Witt

Graduate Student
Email: witt.ea@unc.edu

Emily graduated from East Tennessee State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Biology in 2015. She worked as a research assistant with Dr. Matthew Palmatier investigating the role of cholinergic interneurons in the nucleus accumbens in nicotine reinforcement before being accepted as a Behavioral Neuroscience graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016. Within Dr. Reissner’s Lab, her research focuses on changes in the metabolic function of astrocytes following cocaine self-administration.

Janay Franklin

Graduate Student
Email: jafrank@email.unc.edu

Janay was raised in Red Springs, NC. She attended North Carolina A&T State University, where she received her B.S. in Biology in 2017. After graduating, she began a post-bac in the UNC-Chapel Hill PREP program, where she conducted research in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies. Here, Janay worked under Dr. Joyce Besheer while studying the potential anxiogenic-like effects of predator odor on alcohol consumption via self-administration. At the conclusion of her post-bac, she began her graduate school journey under the Neuroscience Curriculum in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program (BBSP) at UNC-Chapel Hill. Currently, her research in the Reissner lab focuses on identifying the potential mechanism(s) for the decreased astrocytic structure observed following prolonged abstinence of cocaine self-administration. Janay is an advocate of increasing educational equity and is passionate about increasing diversity and support for diverse populations within the STEM field.

Eden Harder

Graduate Student
Email: edenvh@live.unc.edu

Eden graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a BS in Neurobiology in 2019. There, she studied the effects of THC on adolescent brain and behavior, under the mentorship of Professor Steve Mahler. She is now a graduate student in UNC’s Behavioral and Integrative Neuroscience Program. In the Reissner lab, she is interested in astroglial functional changes underlying incubation of cocaine craving.