Shawn Bates is a current Fellow in the 2018–2020 class of SfN’s Neuroscience Scholars Program. Bates received his PhD in neuroscience from Texas A&M University in 2017. His interests include higher learning and research that is focused on how environmental factors, like stress, can contribute to addiction.

Zachary Pennington, PhD, is an instructor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He completed his bachelor's degree in psychology at UCLA, followed by a PhD in behavioral neuroscience at UCLA under the supervision of Michael Fanselow. For his postdoctoral fellowship, he joined the laboratory of Denise Cai, where he has developed and utilized a range of open-source imaging technologies to understand how stress alters neural circuits. His research focus is on understanding how stress results in lasting alterations in neural circuits, predisposing individuals to mental health conditions.

Yosif (Joe) Zaki, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at NYU. He received his BS in behavioral neuroscience with a minor in computer science from Northeastern University in 2018. He received his PhD in neuroscience from Mount Sinai in 2024, where he investigated the neurobiological basis of memory integration across time. He has spent the past 10 years studying how memories are dynamically formed, stored, and updated across time.