Docent Sari Lauri will start in her new position in August 2021 and Academy Professor Eero Castrén will start at the beginning of 2022.
The HiLIFE board has appointed two new research directors for Neuroscience Center (NC).
Docent Sari Lauri has been appointed for a five-year term as research director of the in vivo rodent imaging and electrophysiology core facility. Academy Professor Eero Castrén will take up his new appointment in the new UHBrain profiling area, which will include the position of research director in neuronal plasticity.
Sari Lauri came to Neuroscience Center in 2007 and was group leader for eight years. Currently, she is an associate research director at NC. She is also a principal investigator and university lecturer in the Molecular and Integrative Biosciences Programme of the University of Helsinki. Her research group Synaptic plasticity and development studies the development of glutamatergic circuitry in the limbic system and especially the role of ionotropic glutamate receptors in the process.
Eero Castrén has been a member of Neuroscience Center since its foundation in 2003. From 2013 to 2017, Castrén worked as a director of NC. Currently he is working at NC as an Academy Professor. Castrén's research has focused on neurotrophic factors and the action of antidepressants: his group Neuroplasticity and neurotrophic factors studies the role of neurotrophic factors in the mechanisms of antidepressants, particularly Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and its receptor TRKB.
