Meet the scientific chairs of the FENS – Chen Institute – NeuroLéman Summer School 2024!
Manuel Mameli
Manuel Mameli was born and raised in Sardegna (Italy), where he obtained his master degree in Neuroscience at the University of Cagliari.
He then moved as predoctoral fellow in the laboratory led by Prof. C. Fernando Valenzuela at the University of New Mexico, where he received intense training as an in vitro electrophysiologist by Dr Mario Carta and Prof. C. Valenzuela and became interested in the acute modifications at excitatory and inhibitory synapses after ethanol exposure in the immature and mature brain.
After his experience oversea, he moved back to Europe and obtained his PhD at the University of Geneva in the laboratory of Dr Christian Lüscher where he later remained for a postdoc position. In Geneva, Manuel combined synaptic physiology, with 2-photon imaging to dissect the synaptic modifications in the mesolimbic dopamine circuits promoted by in vivo drug exposure. Among his major results, he highlighted a hierarchical organisation of cocaine-evoked synaptic plasticity underlying drug-driven behavioural phenotype.
He then joined as a Junior Group Leader the Institut du Fer à Moulin, INSERM, headed by Jean-Antoine Girault.
Manuel Mameli was later appointed Associate Professor at the Department of Fundamental Neurosciences at the University of Lausanne, where he moved with his lab in January 2017.
The general interest of the Mameli Lab is to dissect the synaptic circuits implicated in the encoding of salience-related events that are either rewarding or aversive by combining synaptic physiology with viral based mapping and optogenetics. His research aims to understand the role of synaptic modifications occurring in the lateral habenula in mediating behavioral adaptations in physiological and pathological states including depression and addiction.
Ron Stoop
Prof. Stoop was born in the Netherlands, where he studied medical physics and biophysics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, with a one-year study period at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
He worked as Visiting Scientist at Tsinghua University in China and pursued his training in medical pharmacochemistry at the University of Florida. Later, he joined Dr Mu-ming Poo’s group at Columbia University in New York and obtained his Master’s degree and PhD in neuroscience.
He then turned to industry and completed a postdoctoral internship at Glaxo-Wellcome in Geneva and later joined the Department of Cellular Biology and Morphology at the University of Lausanne, where he created his own research group within the new Center for Psychiatric Neurosciences of the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV).
Ron Stoop was appointed UNIL Associate Professor at the CHUV Centre for Psychiatric Neurosciences in 2013.
His research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying anxiety and fear. To untangle these intricate field, Prof. Stoop studies amygdala’s role in emotional disorders and how the effects of oxytocin and vasopressin can modulate the activity of this brain’s area.
For his work, Ron Stoop uses a combination of interdisciplinary methods: anatomy, immunohistochemistry, electrophysiology, optogenetics and behavioural analysis, as well as in vitro and in vivo experiments with rats as animal model.