News

Check this page for regular updates and news about our lab!

June 6, 2026

Evie wins first place at Science Fair!

High school student Evie Stratigos-Simon places first at a multi-county science fair that included approximately 40 high schools for her poster entitled “Studying Risky Cost-Benefit Decision-Making in Mice Using A Novel Behavioral Paradigm”. This was the largest category (Behavioral Science), with approximately 200+ students. 1st place here is awarded to the top 5% of presentations!

May 20, 2026

Alex selected for SfN’s Neuroscience Scholars Program!

🎉 CONGRATULATIONS to Alexandra Ramirez for being selected for the Society for Neuroscience “Neuroscience Scholars Program” (NSP) for the 2026- 2028 cohort! Alex is only one of sixteen trainees across the nation who were selected. The Neuroscience Scholars Program is a two-year training program open to underrepresented graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Building on a 30-year history, the program supports annual travel awards, mentoring, and professional development opportunities to NSP Fellows.

April 8, 2026

Grad Student Blog!

Grad student in the lab, Alex Ramirez, wrote a blog post on how the brain allows us to feel empathy for the Mentorship in Neuroscience Discovery at Sinai (MiNDS) Blog. Check it out to learn more about the social brain!

Blog Link

February 5, 2026

Lab hosts 4th annual Sweis-Cai-Shuman-Fenton joint lab Super Smash Bros. tournament!

4th year in the making, with the addition of Andre Fenton’s lab from NYU this year, we had a huge turn out with over 45 people this year and more prizes and trophies! This year also included an official PI bracket, featuring our FBI Seminar Series Speaker Chris Dulla from Tufts, and special appearances from the Saez and Gulli labs and Sinai alum.

November 15, 2025

Lab presents at the Society for Neuroscience!

Lab members Emma Andraka, Alex Ramirez, Hailey Rosenblum, and Nusrat Jahan, with collaborator Romain Durand-de Cuttoli from the Russo Lab had a blast sharing 6 posters with the SFN community in San Diego, CA!

October 6, 2025

Lab presents at the Society for Neuroeconomics!

August 13, 2025

The lab gets mini scientist visitors!

Mini friends of the lab, Caleb and Gigi, drop into the lab to learn about science and plan their upcoming experiments! These budding little scientists will grow into full-fledged pioneers in the field (that fit properly into lab coats) in no time!

July 11, 2025

New paper published in Science Advances!

In this study, we linked the neurobiology of depression to negative rumination during decision-making. This work speaks to the importance of cross-species research that is constantly forward & back-translated between the clinic & lab. The importance of animal models leading to unanticipated discoveries – even in the realm of human psychology – is invaluable, especially in psychiatry.

Our collaborators recently found levels of a traditionally overlooked class of molecules, non-coding RNA, specifically LINC00473, were reduced in mPFC of women but not men diagnosed with MDD, based on post-mortem human brain tissue studies. Expressing LINC00473 in mPFC promotes resilience to stress in female mice only.

Here, we discovered LINC00473 in mPFC specifically altered change-of-mind decisions in female mice only, by enhancing sensitivity to sunk costs and how much re-evaluating recent mistakes influenced future choices. This is the first demonstration of non-coding RNA playing a role in cognition and evidence that sensitivity to sunk costs & change-of-mind regret stem from a shared value function related to negative rumination & stress susceptibility.

The lab turns 1 year old!

The lab officially turned 1 yr old today! We celebrated by welcoming new incomers into the lab, including new PhD students Hailey Rosemblum (co-advised by Dr. Denise Cai) and Alex Ramirez. We also welcomed new full-time post-bac techs Hannah Kwa, Mira Kondepudy, and Pia Davis. We also welcomed new high school students including Tessa Drobnyk and Evie Stratigos-Simon.

May 15, 2025

Lab presents at FBI Retreat

The lab made it’s first appearance at the annual FBI Retreat located at the Riverside Church this year on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Jan 10, 2025

Lab hosts the 3rd annual Sweis-Cai-Shuman labs Super Smash Bros. tournament!

Our lab started the tradition of hosting a friendly but furious competition every year with our colleagues in the Cai and Shuman labs, featuring fun, food, and coveted trophies that up the ante each year. This year marked the 3rd year we’ve done this, growing bigger each time! Check out some of the highlights below, including the tri-lab-logo’d trophies, and the special Goomba award for the winner of the loser bracket and the squashed Goomba trophy for the loser of the loser bracket 🙂

January 9, 2025

Lab’s first Cells, Circuits, & Behavior WIP presentation!

Grad student Emma Andraka did a phenomenal job presenting at the lab’s first CCB WIP! Emma is co-advised by Brian Sweis and Daniela Schiller interested in the neural mechanisms underlying social decision-making behavior. Emma is developing a novel behavioral paradigm modeled after the Schiller lab’s Social Navigation paradigm in humans embedded within the neuroeconomic foraging framework of the cross-species Restaurant Row and Web-Surf tasks.

October 5, 2024

Former PhD advisors visit the lab!

Brian’s former PhD thesis advisors A. David Redish and Mark J. Thomas visit the lab! Both Mark and Dave got a chance to see the new lab space and meet some of the early team members. We also were able to have mini lab reunions as Amber McLaughlin, Chino Nwakama, and Michelle Corkrum are all former University of Minnesota Golden Gophers Alum and current New Yorkers! Amber was an undergrad with Brian and Mark and a post-bac with Dave and now a current neuroscience PhD student here at Mount Sinai, Michelle was a MD/PhD student co-advised by Mark and Alfonso Araque and now a current pediatric neurology resident at Columbia, and Chino was an undergrad with Mark and Paul Mermelstein and now a current MD/PhD student here at Mount Sinai in neuroscience currently in Yasmin Hurd’s lab!

July 7, 2024

Lab awarded first R01!

The lab was awarded the NIMH BRAINS Award. This is a five-year $4.2 million research project (R01) grant called the Biobehavioral Research Award for Innovative New Scientists (BRAINS award), the prize funds early career researchers who propose bold, high-risk, high-reward ideas that could potentially significantly advance behavioral neuroscience research and have a far-reaching impact in the field of mental health. This award marks the first time in Mount Sinai’s history that a psychiatry resident successfully competed for an R01. Our lab celebrated alongside the lab of Dr. Xiaoting Wu in the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai who also received the NIMH BRAINS Award this year!

July 1, 2024

Sweis Lab officially open!

Our laboratory officially launched this summer at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai! Our lab is located within the Departments of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, located on the 22nd floor of the Annenberg Building. We welcomed new neuroscience PhD graduate student Emma Andraka co-advised by Dr. Daniela Schiller, and team members Ben Yakubov, Nusrat Jahan, Sam Pedersen, Aisha Abid, Zainab Hussain, Susanna Kasparov, Kastalia Granizo, Jason Cai, and Shreoshe Sushill.