the DOOR lab Team
We are passionate about creating a more resilient
world through basic science
Opportunities
We can always make room for one more lab rat.
If you are inspired by our research and would like to connect with the team for a chat, please get in touch here. We’d love to hear from you.
Dani Dumitriu MD, PhD
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Dr. Dumitriu is a general pediatrician and neuroscientist
Dani joined Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics (in Psychiatry) in November 2018, after completing her MD, PhD, pediatric residency, and a fellowship in environmental health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her clinical work is dedicated to caring for newborns as a pediatric hospitalist in the Newborn Medicine Section at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. Dr. Dumitriu's administrative roles include:
Director of the Nurture Science Program
Chair of Columbia University’s COMBO Initiative
Co-Chair within the WiSE Initiative (Women in Sciences Empowerment)
Dr. Dumitriu's favorite role is that of Principal Investigator of the DOOR Lab, investigating the neurocircuitry of resilience and mentoring future independent researchers and clinicians.
Our team
Jen Warmingham, PhD
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
2018 - Present
Jen earned a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rochester, where she conducted research at Mt. Hope Family Center on the lifespan and intergenerational effects of child maltreatment exposure. She completed her Predoctoral Clinical Internship in Child Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Psychiatry (child/adolescent track).
Jen joined the COMBO Initiative as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2022. Her current research applies the developmental psychopathology framework to study intergenerational risk and resilience processes during the perinatal period. She is passionate about trauma-informed interventions and loves being a part of a multidisciplinary team.
Ginger Atwood
Undergraduate (Williams College); Research Assistant
2018 - Present
Ginger Atwood is a Research Assistant in the DOOR lab. She received her bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 2022, where she majored in Chemistry and Psychology with a concentration in Neuroscience. Ginger is a member of the Sigma Xi Honor Society and the recipient of the 2022 American Institute of Chemists Student Achievement Award. Ginger wrote her undergraduate thesis, in collaboration with Dr. Dumitriu and COMBO, on the ecology of the pandemic in New York City and its influences on maternal caregiving behavior at 4 months postpartum.
Ginger's research interests are rooted in translational work. She is fascinated by the biological basis of emotional co-regulation and the molecular underpinnings of dyadic caregiver-infant interactions. She is interested in the neuroscience of infant development and how the early postnatal period influences long-term development and health.
Through her research in the DOOR lab, Ginger studies the developmental origins of stress resiliency in order to elucidate individual differences in stress reactivity in both animal models and humans. In COMBO, she is coordinating an early life intervention aimed at improving mother-infant bonding. In animal models, she contributes to a large DOOR lab effort to map the whole-brain activation patterns of stress-susceptible versus stress-resilient mice.
Ginger hopes ultimately to attend medical school and looks forward to a career at the intersection of neuroscience and clinical care.
Andreane Lavallee
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
2018 - Present
After graduating from University of Montreal with a PhD in Nursing, Andreane received a fellowship award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to join the DOOR lab as a postdoctoral research fellow. Her work in the lab is focused on studying parent-child dyadic interactions through the lens of emotional connection. More specifically, Andreane’s work integrates diverse techniques, including machine learning, emerging dynamic analytic methods, and sequential coding applied to parent-infant face-to-face interaction videos to study dyadic parent-infant emotional connection at the mechanistic level.
Lillian Bryan
Undergraduate; Research Assistant
2018 - Present
Lillian Bryan initially joined as an undergraduate early in her neuroscience degree at Barnard College (Class of 2023), and completed her senior thesis, Investigating Sex Differences in Biobehavioral Endophenotypes Under Different Models of Inescapable Stress, in the DOOR lab, where she remained after graduation to continue gaining lab experience as a research assistant. Her research interests include sex differences in stress responses and the inclusion of female mice in experimental stress paradigms. Ultimately, Lillian plans to pursue an MD and work in underserved areas.
Kevin A Kam
PhD Student (Electrical Engineering)
2018 - Present
Kevin Kam received his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in 2017 and his MS degree from Columbia University in 2020. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Columbia University.Kevin spearheads a collaboration between the DOOR lab and Dr. John Kymissis’ CLUE lab [hyperlink]. Kevin’s project involves the development of novel implantable telemetry devices to track and monitor biological signals in wild rats using the LoRA radio system.
Alessia Manganaro
RESEARCH SCIENTIST & LAB MANAGER
2018 - Present
Dr. Alessia Manganaro is a research scientist in Dr. Dumitriu’s lab. She joined the lab in 2018 to support and manage the basic science component of Dr. Dumitriu research. In this role, she supervises and performs technical and administrative functions to assure the experimental design quality, lab members performance and process improvement of all the experiments. Her research interests focus on understanding how divergent behavioral responses to stress emerge in different individuals. Specifically, she investigates the brain code by monitoring online and offline neuronal activity with different cutting-edge techniques.