DEVELOPMENTAL
NEUROBIOLOGY
 LAB

Dr. Cocas is a developmental neurobiologist. She completed her bachelors degree in Neuroscience and Pscyhology at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. She conducted research in the Memory and Aging Institute, with Dr. Leah Light, in the Claremont Infant Study Center, with Dr. David Moore, in The Ruth and Lee Munroe Laboratory for Cross-Cultural Research, with Dr. Lee Munroe, and in the Lanterman Regional Center, with Dr. Gary Galbraith. As a graduate student, she completed a summer research internship in the lab of Dr. Andrew Lumsden at the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology in Kings College, London. She completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in the Corbin Lab in the Georgetown University Department of Neuroscience,  conducting research there and at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC. She studied the genetic regulation of cell fate in the basal forebrain. She found that differential gene expression was critical for patterning boundary domains in the developing forebrain. She was a student in the Neurobiology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA in 2009. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study synapse formation using viral circuit tracing in the Cell Biology Department at the University of Basel, Switzerland in lab of Dr. Peter Scheiffele. As a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF in the Department of Neurology, she worked in Dr. Samuel Pleasure's Lab to develop new viral tools to probe cortical circuits and neural glial connections. She found a novel developmentally regulated connection between Cajal Retzius cells and developing cortical neurons. She also taught Intro Biology, Human Biology, and Evolution courses at Cal State University, East Bay, an HSI in Hayward, CA. She taught Cellular/Molecular Neurobiology, Neurophysiology, Neuroanatomy, and Developmental Neurobiology courses at Cal State University, Los Angeles, an HSI in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. She joined the Biology faculty at SCU in 2017. She returned to the MBL as a Grass Fellow, where she used patch clamp electrophysiology in brain slices to study the role of neuroligins in neuronal to OPC synapses and myelination. She was the Associate Director of the Grass Fellowship Program at the MBL in 2021 and 2022. Her lab at SCU is focused on synapse formation and myelination in the developing forebrain. She teaches Intro Biology, Neurobiology, Developmental Neurobiology, Neuro 1, and the Neuroscience Capstone at SCU. She is the faculty advisor for SACNAS @ SCU, a course instructor for the First Gen SCU LEAD program, and she works with local schools to bring neuroscience to the classrooms of BIPOC Bay Area students. She has been funded by the NINDS, and was previously a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow, a National Heart Association Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, and a NINDS predoctoral Kirschstein NRSA fellow. She is a First Gen scientist. She grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, and her family is originally from Greece, Mexico, and the UK.