Graduate student Jaime Castrellon won a NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) Award. The grant supports the pre- to post-doctoral transition of graduate students in the neurosciences. The two-phase award facilitates completion of the doctoral dissertation and transition of talented graduate students (F99 phase) to strong neuroscience research postdoctoral positions (K00 phase), and provides career development opportunities relevant to their long-term career goal of becoming independent neuroscience researchers.
Jaime is now a 2021 D-SPAN Scholar as part of the seventh cohort of D-SPAN awardees. The grant will fund his remaining year of training in the F99 phase at Duke where he is co-mentored by Gregory Samanez-Larkin and a remote collaborator Ming Hsu (UC Berkeley).
Prior to joining Duke, Jaime received his bachelor’s degree with majors in Neuroscience and Political Science from the University of Southern California. Following graduation, he spent time as a research assistant at Vanderbilt University and then as a lab manager at UCLA. His dissertation work has been supported by an NSF-GRFP award and seeks to understand how dopamine supports human decisions that involve personal and social rewards. Specifically, he combines functional brain imaging (fMRI and PET), pharmacology, and experimental methods from behavioral economics to study how people integrate costs and benefits in prosocial and strategic decisions. Broadly, Jaime is interested in using tools and techniques from neuroscience and ecologically-valid sampling methods to understand how and why people make decisions that help or harm others around them. Jaime is passionate about progressive practices in mentoring and specifically mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds in science. He was recognized with two university-wide mentorship awards at Duke and mentors students outside the university.
