Biography:

Dr. Amber Nolan is a board-certified neuropathologist and Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Trained both as a physician and a computational neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, she brings a dual perspective to the study of the brain, combining cellular detail with circuit-level thinking. Following her residency and fellowship training at UC San Francisco, she started a research program to study Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Dr. Nolan's work centers on how damage at the level of cortical microcircuits can ripple outward into long-term cognitive dysfunction and neurodegeneration. In her research, she uses mouse models in conjunction with the analysis of human brain tissue to study the characteristics of neurons that are differentially vulnerable to injury. Ultimately, her research focuses on understanding how TBI impacts neural compositions and functions, leading to behavioral, cognitive, and/or neurodegenerative decline. Dr. Nolan is also dedicated to mentorship and invested in training future neuroscientists and physician-scientists through actively mentoring future researchers and clinicians at various stages in their education in her lab.