
Faculty and Staff
Faculty
Bob Stewart
Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Neuroscience Program Head
- Parmly Hall 231
- Email: stewartb@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8837
Stewart’s courses include Psychoactive Drugs and Behavior and Neuropharmacology. He has researched salty, sweet and bitter taste development as well as the development and plasticity of taste axon termination patterns.
Sarah Blythe
Associate Professor of Biology
- Parmly Hall 301
- Email: blythes@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8342
Professor Blythe teaches Addiction and Drugs of Abuse, Vertebrate Endocrinology, Anatomy and Physiology, Food for Thought and Experimental Neurophysiology. Her research explores the physiological and neurobiological effects of obesity. Current projects in her laboratory involve diet-induced cognitive impairments, the gut-brain connection (microbiome), and time-restricted feeding paradigms.
Ryan Brindle
Associate Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science
- Parmly Hall 131
- Email: rbrindle@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8835
Brindle teaches courses related to brain and behavior, statistics, and the impact of mental stress and sleep. His lab researches the connections between mental stress, sleep, and health to improve clinical interventions.
Jonathan Erickson
Professor of Physics and Engineering
- Howe Hall 222
- Email: ericksonj@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8293
Erickson’s courses include Physics and Perception of Music, Electronics, and Bioengineering and Bioinspired Design. His research interests include biomedical signal processing for gastrointestinal electrical activity patterns. In his Bioelectronics Lab, students develop electronics hardware and software algorithms to measure dynamic patterns of electrical activity in the gastrointestinal tract.
Helen I’Anson
AIM Program Co-Director, John T. Perry Professor of Biology and Research Science
- Howe Hall 405
- Email: iansonh@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8974
Professor I’Anson teaches courses in fundamentals of biology, animal physiology, microanatomy, reproductive physiology and neuroendocrinology. She also supervises W&L students in the Biology Department’s St. Andrews-W&L Partnership Program. She is currently researching the neurobiology of puberty.
Dan Johnson
Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Data Science Program Head
- Parmly Hall 220
- Email: johnsondr@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8629
Johnson’s courses include Psychology Mythbusters and Introduction to Data Science: Mind Analytics. His lab uses computational models and empirical data to investigate the mechanisms underlying creativity processes like the generation of novel ideas.
Nikki Lee
Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science
- Parmly Hall 236
- Email: nlee@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8874
Dr. Lee’s courses include Brain and Behavior, Hormones and Social Behavior. Her Social Behavior Lab investigates the neural and hormonal mechanisms underlying social behavior in non-human animals, in the lab and field, with a particular interest in the evolution of social behavior.
Natalia Toporikova
Associate Professor of Biology
- Parmly Hall 303
- Email: toporikovan@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-5809
Professor Toporikova’s courses include Biological Clocks and Rhythms, The Architecture of Living Systems, Dynamics of Biological Systems and Pregnancy: A Kiss in Time? In her research, she applies methods of computational modeling to study a wide range of biological systems. Some recent projects include neural control of breathing, pregnancy initiation in rats, and daily circadian cycle.
Fiona Watson
Associate Professor of Biology
- Howe Hall 413
- Email: watsonf@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8864
Professor Watson’s courses include Cell Biology, Animal Development, Neural Imaging and CSI: W&L. Her overall research interests encompass two main areas of investigation: 1) the recovery of optic nerve axons of adult Xenopus using a nerve crush injury model, and 2) the effects of pesticide exposure on the neurogenesis of sensory neurons.
Wythe Whiting
Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science
- Parmly Hall 133
- Email: whitingw@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8210
Whiting teaches courses in cognition, evolutionary psychology and attention. His lab has been researching how increasing neural noise affects declining cognition in older adults as well as how smart phones affect sleep/attention.
Affiliated Faculty
Simon Levy
Professor of Computer Science and Interim Department Head
- Parmly Hall 407B
- Email: levys@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8417
Levy teaches courses on artificial intelligence, neural networks, and robotics. His current research involves high-fidelity simulation of autonomous aerial vehicles (drones).
David Marsh
Professor of Biology
- Parmly Hall 320A
- Email: marshd@wlu.edu
- Phone: 540-458-8176
Marsh teaches Intro to Behavioral Ecology, Microbiome, Field Herpetology, Animal Behavior and Statistics for Biology and Medicine. His research includes effects of climate change on endemic mountaintop salamanders, effects of roads and land use on frog and toad populations across the Eastern and central U.S., and population dynamics of terrestrial salamanders.
Emeritus Faculty
Tyler Lorig
Professor Emeritus of Cognitive and Behavioral Science
Staff
Program Info
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Washington and Lee University
Recipient’s Name, Neuroscience Program
204 W. Washington Street
Lexington, Virginia 24450