Michael Totty

I am a postdoctoral neuroscientist working at the intersection of molecular, computational, and systems neuroscience. My research combines transcriptomic profiling of the human brain with circuit-level studies in preclinical models to uncover how cell types and neural pathways are altered in psychiatric disease. This two-part strategy links the identification of vulnerable cell types and circuits in postmortem human brains with experimental dissection of their functional roles in vivo. In parallel, I develop new computational tools and data resources to accelerate discovery and advance our understanding of the neural circuits that underlie psychiatric disorders across species.

Currently, I’m an NIMH F32 Kirschtein-NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, advised by Dr. Stephanie Hicks and co-advised by Dr. Keri Martinowich of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. My work is additionally funded through a Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. I previously received my PhD in Neuroscience under the mentorship of Dr. Stephen Maren at the Institute for Neuroscience at Texas A&M University in 2022, and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 2016.