PI Robyn Crook awarded NSF CAREER grant
Our lab’s work has been funded by the NSF for the next five years, to continue our work on elucidating neural mechanisms of plasticity that underlie injury-induced behaviors in cephalopods. This grant includes funding for studies looking at fitness effects of injury-induced behavior in contexts that have not previously been studied, such as in mating and reproductive success. Other experiments are focused on mapping and characterizing nociceptive sensory neurons in the peripheral ganglia and central brains of cephalopods, and continued work supporting welfare-based refinements to experimental procedures using cephalopods. This grant mechanism (NSF CAREER) also includes support for educational work and outreach that our lab already does regularly, so this will allow us to grow these efforts to support neuroscience training for students in the Department of Biology, and continue our work engaging pre-K children in STEM.