Makinson Lab
Location and Contact Information
Principal Investigator
The Makinson lab takes a multi-modal approach to understand the complex relationships between early developmental genetic impairments and evolving disease phenotypes. Using genome engineering, we introduce clinically-relevant variants into mice and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) to generate rodent and human brain organoid models of neurological and neuropsychiatric disease. We then use these rodent and human models to probe the resulting molecular and neurophysiological impairments that result. From these studies, we design targeted manipulations to identify the most relevant points of impairment, potential targets for therapeutic interventions, and often, in the process, we uncover unexpected roles of these genes in normal/typical brain development.
One area of particular interest for our lab is epilepsy, which is a devastating neurological disorder that is characterized by the occurrence of spontaneous seizures. Seizures, which fundamentally reflect hyperexcitability in neural networks, manifest at the cellular, simple microcircuit, and the systems level and are captured well by diverse model systems. This allows us to probe the consequences of epilepsy-related variants at multiple levels of complexity and to make comparisons across rodent and human cell model systems. This paradigm enables us to uncover the most fundamental aspects of a given gene's functions in shaping brain activity, its role in pathogenesis, and its place within the larger, often complex, genetic risk architecture.
We are committed to supporting creative independent thinkers of all backgrounds to do their best work towards making impactful contributions to basic and translational neuroscience. Interested students or trainees are encouraged to reach out to Dr. Makinson to inquire about open positions in the lab.
For a complete list of publications, please visit PubMed.gov.
Lab Members
Jane Simko, PhD
- Postdoctoral Fellow
Jane studied at UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree then pursued a masters and doctorate in Neuroscience at the University of Lausanne and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Her thesis under the direction of Prof. Henry Markram involved studying the morphology and functionality of local interneurons in the thalamus of mice using multiple patch clamp electrophysiology. She is now a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Makinson lab working to understand the role of local interneurons in the thalamus in sensory processing and epilepsy.
Erin Cullen, PhD
- Postdoctoral Fellow
Erin received her undergraduate degree from University of Pittsburgh. She completed her PhD at University of Vermont under the direction of Dr. Matthew Weston. Her thesis research focused on defining the role of the two mTOR complexes in genetic epilepsies that act through the mTOR pathway. She continues to pursue epilepsy research as a postdoc in the Makinson lab, where she utilizes patch clamp electrophysiology and two-photon calcium imaging to study mechanisms of neural dysfunction in sodium channelopathies.
Christine Liu
- Graduate Student Neurobiology & Behavior PhD Program
Christine is a PhD student in the Neurobiology and Behavior program at Columbia University. She completed her undergraduate studies in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 2021, while working in the labs of Dr. John Huguenard and Dr. Surya Ganguli on seizure prediction models with machine learning. Currently, she is developing machine learning assisted approaches to seizure detection and classification and helping to build the next generation of human brain organoid models of epilepsy.
Jack Whitely
- Graduate Student Neurobiology & Behavior PhD Program
Jack is a PhD student in the Neurobiology and Behavior program at Columbia University. As an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), he worked as a Lab Technician and Research Assistant in the Fred H. Gage lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies under Dr. Tomohisa Toda, Dr. Maria C. Marchetto, and Dr. Jeff Jones. Here, he used stem cell-based models to study neuropsychiatric risk loci and mouse models to better understand how transposable elements play a role in neurodevelopment. In the Makinson lab he will leverage stem cell-derived brain organoids to study genetic epilepsies and the circuit mechanisms of rhythm generation in assembled circuits.
Kyle Helms
- Graduate Student Integrated Program in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies
Kyle is a PhD student in the Integrated Program of Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies at Columbia. He’s coming directly from his undergraduate studies in Biology at New Mexico State University. As an undergraduate MARC Fellow under direction of Dr. Jennifer Curtiss, he used fruit flies as a model to study transcriptional regulation and protein interactions during development. Before coming to NYC, he spent a virtual summer at UCSF developing computational approaches to analyze archaeal replication under direction of Prof. Carol Gross. At Columbia, he is excited to bring his genetics and molecular biology background to the Makinson lab’s endeavor to study neurodevelopmental consequences of voltage-gated sodium channels in health and disease.
Tamina (Keira) Ramirez
- Graduate Student Neurobiology & Behavior PhD Program
Keira is currently pursuing her PhD in the Neurobiology and Behavior program at Columbia University. Keira began her research endeavors in 2012 at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, studying the effect of sensory overstimulation on development. This exploration continued throughout her undergraduate years at Western Washington University. In 2014, Keira embarked on an internship at the University of Washington, collaborating with Dr. Franck Kalume to unravel the pathophysiology of genetic epilepsy using an SCN1A knockout mouse model of Dravet Syndrome. Upon earning her B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience, Keira transitioned to the Allen Institute for Brain Science. There, she investigated the functional connectivity of the visual system employing high-density Neuropixels probes. Now, she eagerly brings her expertise in electrophysiology, surgery, and mouse neurocircuitry to the Makinson Lab. Her research focuses on examining the role of local interneurons in fundamental thalamic functions and their integration within the thalamocortical circuit, particularly in relation to seizure generation and termination in an SCN8A mouse model of epilepsy.
Youjin Oh, PhD
- Postdoctoral Fellow
Youjin completed her undergraduate studies in 2015 from Chonnam National University in South Korea, which included a year as an exchange student at the University of Missouri. She earned her Ph.D. at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology under the mentorship of Dr. Jong-Woo Sohn. Her doctoral dissertation focused on validating how GIRK channels expressed in hypothalamic neurons maintain energy homeostasis utilizing patch-clamp, immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, and metabolic assays. Leveraging her background in electrophysiology and systemic physiology, her postdoctoral research in the Makinson Lab focuses on modeling neuronal development and pathology using human brain organoids and rodents.
Shilpa Prajapati
- Research Technician
Shilpa Prajapati is a Staff Associate in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University. She earned her Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Biotechnology from Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU) in India. Prior to joining Columbia, Shilpa worked as a Senior Scientist in the biotech industry, where she led R&D projects focused on molecular diagnostics, RT-qPCR assay development, and mammalian cell line culture. In the Makinson lab, she brings her expertise in cell and molecular biology to develop stem cell-derived human cortical organoids and apply immunohistochemistry to understand mechanisms underlying genetic epilepsies. She uses CRISPR tools to generate disease-relevant mutant cell line models.
Sudha Guttikonda MD, PhD
- Postdoctoral Fellow
Sudha received her undergraduate degree from MIT and went on to pursue a dual graduate degree at the Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program in New York City. She received her PhD in Neuroscience working with Dr. Lorenz Studer at MSKCC during which she built a model of microglial differentiation and tri-culture system from human pluripotent stem cells to study neuroinflammatory pathways in Alzheimer’s Disease. She completed her Psychiatry residency at Columbia University and is currently a T32 research fellow. In the Makinson lab, she is using human stem cell-derived assembloid models to investigate how microglial cells can impact neurodevelopment in psychiatric disease.
Select Publications
C.J. Liu, C. Martin, A.C. Lee, T.T. Sands, W.N. Frankel, C.D. Makinson. Machine learning framework for integration of video and EEG reveals distinct seizure phenotypes in mouse models of epilepsy. Journal of Neuroscience, In Press (2026)
S.R. Guttikonda, C.D. Makinson. Human cellular models of autism and related conditions. Biological Psychiatry, 10:S0006-3223 (2026)
K.D. Konrad-Vicario, V. Paradise, L. Demir, C. Nguyen, C.D. Makinson, Z. Maing, K.V. Ramachandran. Dendritic translation and neuroproteasome-mediated degradation of endogenous tau revealed by STARFISH. Nature Neuroscience, 1-12 (2026)
C. Gong, P. Affatato, M. Fay, S.R. Guttikonda, N.J. O’Connor, E. Nobel, M. Heal, B. Haydock, R. Mapa, E. Daniel De La Cruz, J. Kowalko, M. Tosches, C. Gerfen, R. Hen, C.D. Makinson, H. Hibshoosh, G. Glasser, R. Tomer. Hybrid solid- liquid optics enable scalable, high-resolution, light-sheet microscopy across diverse immersion media. Nature Biotechnology, 1-13 (2026)
M. Yam, J. Nassir, D. Galber, S. Quinn, R. Gal, M. Ovadia, M. Bordeynik-Cohen, E. Peled, C.D. Makinson, M.H. Kedem, A. Fattal-Valevski, W.N. Frankel, K.B. Avraham, M. Rubinstein. A mouse model of GRIN2D-developmental and epileptic encephalopathy recapitulates the human disease. Brain, awaf149, (2026).
M. Francois, K.L. Vranich, I.C. Delgado, A. Lafond, N.R. Lopatinsky, T. Davis, E.M. Lewis, M. Kuromaru, R. Hassouna, B. Williams, S.E. Ho, L.A. Souza, D. Neri, Y. Oh, C.D. Makinson, K.G. Bath, G. Dolen, L.M. Zeltser. Amygdala AVPR1A mediates susceptibility to chronic social isolation in female mice. Nature Communications, 16(1)9740 (2025).
B.L.D. Costa, K.M. Helms, K. Theodore, Y.T. Tsai, S.M. Caruso, S. Liu, J.R.L. Carvalho, N.D. Nolan, S. Tahir, C.D. Makinson, S.H. Tsang, P.M. J. Quinn. Prime editing for the investigation of aberrant splicing defect associated with a pathogenic PRPH2 variant. Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids, 36(4):102740 (2025).
R. Mahling, B. Hegyi, E.R. Cullen, T.M. Cho, A.R. Rodriques, L. Fossier, M. Yehya, L. Yang, B. Chen, A.N. Katchman, N. Chakouri, R. Ji, E.Y. Wan, J. Kushner, S.O. Marx, S. Ovchinnikov, C.D. Makinson, D.M. Bers, M. Ben-Johny. De novo design of a peptide modulator to reverse sodium channel dysfunction linked to cardiac arrhythmias and epilepsy. Cell, 188(22):6170-6185.e19 (2025).
The SCN8A Research Consortium. A research roadmap for SCN8A-related disorders: Addressing knowledge gaps and aligning research priorities across stakeholders. Orphanet Journal of Rare Disease, 20(1)444, (2025).
J.J. Teoh, J. Simko, C.R. Camp, C. Liu, W. Wang, D. Williams, L. Ma, D. Soundararajan, C. Martin, N.K. Taylor, E. Francois, S. Petri, A. Kanber, A. Ravichandra, M.E. Pero, F. Bartolini, T.C. Swayne, C.M. Lutz, A. Zuberi, M. Rubinstein, M.H. Kedem, H. Yuan, J.N. Gelinas, T.T. Sands, S.Q. Harper, S.F. Traynelis, C.D. Makinson, W.N. Frankel. Synaptic dysregulation underlies seizure and behavioral phenotypes in a model of GRIN2D-DEE. Brain, Awaf125 (2025).
W. Wang, D.J. Williams, J. Teoh, D. Soundararajan, A. Zuberi, C.M. Lutz, W.N. Frankel, C.D. Makinson. Impaired axon initial segment structure and function in a model of ARHGEF9 Developmental and Epileptic Encephalopathy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 15:121(42) (2024).
B. Yasin, D.J. Williams, C. Troyas, N.L. Harrison, C.D. Makinson, P.S. Garcia. Ketamine potentiates AMPA receptor-mediated activity in the somatosensory cortex. Anesthesiology, 141(3), 611-614 (2024).
Elleman, A.V., Milicil N., Williams D.J., Simko J., Liu J.C., Haynes A.L., Ehrlich D.E.*, Makinson C.D.*, Du Bois J.*, Behavioral control through the direct, focal silencing of neuronal activity. Cell Chemical Biology (2024).
Evans SW, Shi DQ, Chavarha M, Plitt MH, Taxidis J, Madruga B, Fan JL, Hwang FJ, van Keulen SC, Suomivuori CM, Pang MM, Su S, Lee S, Hao YA, Zhang G, Jiang D, Pradhan L, Roth RH, Liu Y, Dorian CC, Reese AL, Negrean A, Losonczy A, Makinson CD, Wang S, Clandinin TR, Dror RO, Ding JB, Ji N, Golshani P, Giocomo LM, Bi GQ, Lin MZ. A positively tuned voltage indicator for extended electrical recordings in the brain. Nature Methods, 1104-1113 (2023).
Colombo S, Reddy HP, Petri S, Williams DJ, Shalomov B, Dhindsa RS, Gelfman S, Krizay D, Bera AK, Yang M, Peng Y, Makinson CD, Boland MJ, Frankel WN, Goldstein DB, Dascal N. Epilepsy in a mouse model of GNB1 encephalopathy arises from altered potassium (GIRK) channel signaling and is alleviated by a GIRK inhibitor. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 18;17:1175895 (2023).