Stephanie Borgland

Tier 1 Canada Research Chair

Professor Physiology & Pharmacology

Dr. Stephanie Borgland is a Professor and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Departments of Physiology & Pharmacology as well as Psychiatry at the University of Calgary. She is affiliated with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education and the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute. She is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada. From 2008-2013 she was an Assistant Professor in the department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in Pharmacology/Neuroscience from the University of Sydney, Australia in 2002 and completed her post-doctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco ending in 2007. Her research focuses on understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of aberrant motivation related to addiction and obesity.

Research Technician

Min Qiao, MSc

Min Qiao received her MSc in physiology from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor of Medicine in Clinical Medicine from Luzhou Medical College, China. She is a skilled technician with expertise in immunohistochemistry, rodent surgery, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, biochemistry and statistics.

Postdoctoral Scholars

Aida Mohammadkhani, PhD

Dr. Mohammadkhani received her PhD from Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran, Iran. She completed her PhD in the laboratories of Dr. Saeed Semnanian and Dr. Gary Aston Jones at Rutgers University studying the role of orexins in opioid addiction. Dr. Mohammadkhani is continuing this work in the Borgland lab to fully characterize how orexin and dynorphin modulate different neural circuits originating in the ventral tegmental area.

Drew Neyens, PhD

Dr. Neyens received his PhD from Washington State University, USA. He completed his PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Suzanne Appleyard studying the electrophysiological effects of neuromodulators in the nucleus tract solitarius. In the Borgland lab, he is interested in how the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus of the brainstem modulates activity and synaptic transmission of ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons.

PhD Students

Lauren Seabrook

Lauren received her BSc from the University of British Columbia. Lauren is interested in how the function of the orbitofrontal cortex is changed with an obesogenic diet.

Colleen Peterson

Colleen received their MSc from the University of Manitoba with Dr. Mark Fry where they studied electrophysiological properties of subfornical area neurons. Colleen is interested in how prenatal cannabis exposure alters the brain and behaviour adolescent offspring.

Master’s students

Marissa Sobey

Marissa has a BSc from the University of Alberta. Marissa is developing a model of acute astrocyte reactivity in the orbitofrontal cortex.

Duncan Noble

Duncan has a BSc from Pennsylvania State University. Duncan is interested in characterizing the dorsal raphe dopamine neuron projection to the orbitofrontal cortex.

Recent departures

Nathan Godfrey, PhD

Nathan received his PhD in December 2021. He is now located in Ottawa in the Beique lab!

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