Antoneta Gavoci and Stephanie Staszko Receive 2025 Kavli Postdoctoral Award for Academic Diversity

Antoneta Gavoci, PhD, from the laboratory of Shaul Yogev, and Stephanie Staszko, PhD, from the laboratory of Alfred Kaye, have been selected to receive the 2025 Kavli Postdoctoral Award for Academic Diversity.

The Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine is committed to fostering and supporting an inclusive and representative neuroscience research community. The Kavli Postdoctoral Award for Academic Diversity aims to support exceptional scholars who bring a diversity of perspectives, identities, and backgrounds to academic research, including those from groups that are historically underrepresented in the sciences. This Award supports up to two years of mentored research in the neurosciences at Yale University, including salary, benefits, and a research allowance.

Antoneta Gavoci

After receiving her PhD from the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, Dr. Gavoci joined the Department of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine in November 2023 as a postdoctoral fellow. In the Yogev Lab, Dr. Gavoci aims to elucidate the mechanisms regulating tubulin delivery, turnover, and degradation under physiological and pathological conditions such as aging, injury, and altered synaptic activity.

"This project investigates how neurons maintain their axonal and dendritic structures through microtubule turnover, a critical process for lifelong neuronal function," said Gavoci. "Using CRISPR-based genome editing and live super-resolution imaging in C. elegans, I have developed innovative tools to visualize tubulin dynamics with single-axon resolution in vivo."

Stephanie Staszko

Stephanie Staszko received her PhD from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 2021. She joined the Yale Department of Psychiatry in the fall of 2021 as a postdoctoral associate in the Kaye Lab. Dr. Staszko is interested in how experience and emotional state alter sensory representations in the brain to generate adaptive and maladaptive behaviors.

"My work aims to understand the relationship between sensory processing, norepinephrine release, and arousal states using a novel virtual height threat task," explained Staszko. "I am using single-neuron imaging and optogenetic techniques to study the role of a sensory - neuromodulatory circuit in driving behavioral responses to visual threat. Using pupillometry as a measure of arousal, I hope to determine the relationship between activity in these circuits, arousal state, and behavioral responses to threat."