PI: Susan Shen, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor (started Summer 2024)
Susan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa in the Department of Psychiatry. She grew up in Ames, Iowa and attended college at Caltech, where she double majored in biology and English. She completed her MD/PhD at Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied gene regulation in the mammalian retina and brain in the lab of Joseph Corbo. She then completed her psychiatry residency at UCSF, during which she conducted postdoctoral research in the systems pharmacology labs of Steven Altschuler and Lani Wu, focusing on hypoxia. Susan officially became a Hawkeye in Summer 2024! She enjoys writing poetry, reading literature, spending time outdoors with her family while minimizing mosquito exposure, and improvising upon new recipes with reckless abandon.
Benjamin Borrman
Post-Baccalaureate Research Intern (started Fall 2024)
Ben is from a small town in Minnesota, who attended the University of Iowa to get his BS in Neuroscience. He has spent the past year and a half working at the University of Iowa Health Care orthopedics, trauma, and spine unit and is interested in pursuing a medical career as a surgeon. He is interested in a diverse range of research topics and has spent the past two years with the Kliemann Social Cognitive Neuroscience lab before joining the Shen lab as a post-bacc research assistant. Aside from academics, Ben enjoys spending time on Lake Superior with his family, cooking a new meal a week, and cheering on the Hawkeyes.
Alyxandra "Lexie" Golden
Visiting MSTP student (started Spring 2025)
Lexie is a second-year MSTP student at the Carver College of Medicine. Originally from Denver, she earned a BA in biochemistry with a minor in computer science at the University of Colorado Boulder. After graduating, she completed a postbaccalaureate fellowship in the lab of Jiyeon Choi, PhD, MS at the NIH, where she studied genetic susceptibility to lung cancer. Her current interests lie in leveraging genomic data to better predict and characterize complex diseases. Outside of medicine and research, Lexie is an avid rock climber and outdoors enthusiast.
ROTATION STUDENTS
Spring 2025
- Sophie Keis, 1st year Neuroscience PhD rotation student (2/2025-5/2025)
- Prerana Ramanan, 1st year Neuroscience PhD rotation student (2/2025-5/2025)
Winter 2024
- Safa Kalteh, 1st year Human Toxicology PhD rotation student (11/2024-2/2025)
- Cassidy Kline, 1st year Human Toxicology PhD rotation student (11/2024-2/2025)