Memories of places and events associated with where drugs of abuse are consumed can trigger cravings and relapse even after years of abstinence. My research aims at understanding the neural mechanisms that are involved in forming these memories and how they are influenced by the actions of different neuromodulators. I study this using mouse models, innovative behavior paradigms and record from dendrites, axons and thousands of neurons in the hippocampus with two-photon microscopy to develop a network level understanding of why drug-related memories are so strong.

Niloufar recently received her Ph.D. in mathematics, specializing in statistics, from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her primary research focus lies in Model Identification and Variable Selection for high-dimensional sparse datasets and big data analysis. 

Her current research is centered on modeling addiction and substance abuse behavior using longitudinal addiction data. The main objective of her work is to uncover and understand the key differentiating factors influencing smoking behavior and to develop efficient models for analyzing the data.