Therese Koch

Therese Koch

PhD Candidate

UT Southwestern

Biography

Therese Koch is a neuroscience PhD candidate in the Roberts Lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. She studies neural circuits and genes underlying song learning in zebra finches, and develops software tools for song analysis. Before starting her PhD, Therese got her BSc in Neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. There, she completed an honours research project on the mating preferences of female songbirds in the Woolley Lab. Outside of the lab Therese is passionate about science communication and sharing her love of neuroscience and birds with anyone willing to listen.

Interests

  • Vocal Learning
  • Systems Neuroscience
  • Audio Processing

Education

  • PhD Candidate in Neuroscience, 2018 - Present

    UT Southwestern Medical Center

  • BSc in Neuroscience, 2018

    McGill University

Skills

R

Python

Data Visualization

Presenting

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

PhD Candidate

UT Southwestern Medical Center

Aug 2018 – Present Dallas, Texas

My primary focus in the lab is developing novel high throughput song analysis systems. I also have experience with:

  • Designing and conducting behavioural experiments
  • Mentoring highschool and undergraduate students
  • Community outreach
  • Lesion and virus injection survival surgeries
 
 
 
 
 

Undergraduate Researcher

McGill University

Jan 2017 – May 2018 Montreal, Canada
I was an undergraduate research assistant in the Woolley Lab, where I complete an honours project investigating song preferences in female bengalese finches.

Recent Publications

Expression of FoxP2 in the basal ganglia regulates vocal motor sequences in the adult songbird

Disruption of the transcription factor FoxP2, which is enriched in the basal ganglia, impairs vocal development in humans and …
Lei Xiao, Devin P Merullo, Therese M I Koch, Mou Cao, Marissa Co, Ashwinikumar Kulkarni, Genivieve Konopka, Todd F Roberts
DOI

Autism-linked gene FoxP1 selectively regulates the cultural transmission of learned vocalizations

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by impaired learning of social skills and language. Memories of how parents and …
Francisco Garcia-Oscos, Therese M I Koch, Harshida Pancholi, Massimo Trusel, Vamsi Daliparthi, Marissa Co, Emily Seonhye Park, Fatma Ayhan, Danyal H Alam, Jennifer E Holdway, Genevieve Konopka, Todd F Roberts
DOI

Accomplish­ments

Neural Scientist Training Program Fellow

Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute Feb 2021
I am a recipient of the O’Donnell Brain Institute’s Neural Scientist Training Program (NSTP) Fellowship; a fellowship designed to support early career researchers working in translational neuroscience. In addition to mentorship and clinical opportunities, this competitive fellowship provides complete funding support for two years of work towards my PhD.

Neuromatch Academy Interactive Track

Neuromatch Academy Jul 2020
I was selected to participate as an interactive track student in the inaugural year of Neuromatch Academy; an online collaborative course on advanced modeling techniques and machine learning applied to neuroscience datasets.

Python Data Science Handbook

O’Reilly Jun 2020
I completed all examples and exercises in this textbook to stengthen my skills with NumPy and Pandas data structures, and the Scikit-Learn API for machine learning applications.

R for Data Science

O’Reilly Feb 2020
I completed this texbook and all exercises therein, achieving a strong working knowledge of data analysis and plotting using ggplot and dplyr, among other tidyverse packages in R.

R for Beginners Level I & II

UT Southwestern Bioinformatics Nanocourse Jan 2020
I was selected to participate in this intensive 4-week course which covered plotting, modeling, common statistical tests and working with RNA sequencing data in R.

Recent Posts

When finding a mate, intelligence matters to female parakeets

Click here for the full article on Massive Science.
Last updated on Sep 7, 2020 1 min read
When finding a mate, intelligence matters to female parakeets

Nobel Prizes: the Fairytale of Science?

Click here for the full article on the UT Southwestern Science Policy, Education, and Communication club (SPEaC) blog.
Last updated on Sep 7, 2020 1 min read
Nobel Prizes: the Fairytale of Science?

NIPS AI Conference to Continue Laughing about Nipples at the Expense of Women in Tech

Click here for the full article on Medium.
Last updated on Sep 7, 2020 1 min read
NIPS AI Conference to Continue Laughing about Nipples at the Expense of Women in Tech

Projects

Plotting Birdsong Syntax

I created a Shiny web application that allows users to upload labeled birsong and quickly generate a visualization of the bird’s syntax.

Contact

  • 5232 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, TX 75390
  • DM Me