Faculty and Staff

George Washington statue on Washington Hall

Faculty 

Bob Stewart

Bob Stewart

Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Neuroscience Program Head

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.

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Sarah Blythe

Sarah Blythe

Associate Professor of Biology

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.

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Ryan Brindle

Ryan Brindle

Associate Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science

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.

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Jonathan Erickson

Jonathan Erickson

Professor of Physics and Engineering

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.

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Helen I’Anson

Helen I’Anson

AIM Program Co-Director, John T. Perry Professor of Biology and Research Science

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.

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Dan Johnson

Dan Johnson

Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Data Science Program Head

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.

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Nikki Lee

Nikki Lee

Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science

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.

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Natalia Toporikova

Natalia Toporikova

Associate Professor of Biology

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.

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Fiona Watson

Fiona Watson

Associate Professor of Biology

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.

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Wythe Whiting

Wythe Whiting

Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science

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.

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Affiliated Faculty 

Simon Levy

Simon Levy

Professor of Computer Science and Interim Department Head

Levy teaches courses on artificial intelligence, neural networks, and robotics. His current research involves high-fidelity simulation of autonomous aerial vehicles (drones).

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David Marsh

David Marsh

Professor of Biology

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.

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Emeritus Faculty 

Tyler Lorig

Tyler Lorig

Professor Emeritus of Cognitive and Behavioral Science

Staff 

Leigh Ann McCoy

Leigh Ann McCoy

Administrative Assistant

Program Info

  • Washington and Lee University
    Recipient’s Name, Neuroscience Program
    204 W. Washington Street
    Lexington, Virginia 24450

Bob Stewart

Program Head

Leigh Ann McCoy

Administrative Assistant