New Neuroscience Faculty

The Neurosciences at UMass continues to expand with the addition of several new faculty members in a number of departments and colleges.

Megan Huber, Chase Cornelison, Jennifer Rauch, Douglas Martini, Siyuan Rao

In the last year, UMass hired four new Assistant Professors who all approach neuroscience from different directions.

Megan Huber is in the department Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. She received her PhD from Northeastern University and was most recently a post doc at MIT. Her research focuses on understanding how humans and robots can learn from the physical interactions of one another. Visit her lab website

Chase Cornelison joined UMass in 2019 as an Assistant Professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering. He received his PhD from the University of Texas in Austin in Chemical Engineering. His lab is developing new therapeutic strategies for restoring function after neural injury. They apply elements of cancer biology and materials science to retrain the damaged nervous system and overcome barriers to tissue regrowth. Learn more about his work here…

Jennifer Rauch is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She received her PhD at the University of Michigan and did postdoctoral work at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her lab studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms that contribute to diseases associated with protein misfolding and aggregation – with a particular focus on the neurodegenerative protein tau. Visit her lab’s website to learn more…

Siyuan Rao just joined the Biomedical Engineering Department as an Assistant Professor. She earned her PhD at Beihang University and was most recently a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. Her lab develops magnetic techniques and soft-materials-based photometric systems to remotely shape freely-moving behaviors and record targeted neural activity in mice. Rao’s research involves the joint effort of multiple disciplines including material engineering, polymer science and neuroscience. Learn more from her website…

Douglas Martini is a new Assistant Professor in the Department on Kinesiology. He received his PhD at the University of Michigan and did postdoctoral research at Oregon Health and Science University. His research focuses on understanding the effects of central neural dysfunction on motor and cognitive performance due to neurotrauma and neurodegenerative disease. He uses  transcranial magnetic stimulation and functional near-infrared spectroscopy to understand neural mechanisms and develop therapeutic approaches to manage dysfunction. Visit his website to learn more…