Benjamin D. Auerbach

Principal Investigator

Ben Auerbach is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a full-time member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology.

Dr. Auerbach received his Ph.D. in neuroscience at MIT, where he studied mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in Fragile X syndrome and related neurodevelopmental disorders. He did his postdoctoral training at the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the University at Buffalo, where he investigated the neural circuits mechanisms underlying auditory perceptual disorders associated with hearing loss.

Xiaopeng Liu

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr. Xiaopeng Liu earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in Heifi and had 4+ years of post-graduate research training at the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the University at Buffalo.

He is currently investigating central auditory pathology in rodent models of autism and hearing disorders.

Noelle James

Lab Manager / Postdoc

Noelle earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She majored in Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Her current work in the lab is on behavioral assaying and measuring auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) for hearing sensitivity.

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Walker Gauthier

Graduate Student in Neuroscience

Walker has a B.S. in Neuroscience from John's Hopkins University.

Walker is planning to work on the relationship between long range frontal cortical circuits and local auditory circuits and how this relationship is altered with Fragile X syndrome. Along this line of inquiry, he would like to explore this framework developmentally. He is also interested in Ultrasonic Vocalizations of rats and how their verbal communication and social adaptions are altered with Fragile X syndrome.