Academic research is not a career path that you can tackle all alone; it takes a village to learn how to navigate academia and bring new knowledge into the world!”
Ashley Holloway
Postdoctoral Scholar in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Ashley Holloway is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences in the Feinberg School of Medicine. She studies how cells in the brain interact to influence certain behaviors in mice. Dr. Holloway is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a National Institute of Health (NIH) Blueprint and BRAIN Initiative D-SPAN Award (F99/K00), and is a first-generation college graduate.
How would you describe your research and/or work to a non-academic audience?
I study how two cell types—astrocytes and neurons—in an area of the brain called the ventral tegmental area work together to drive approach and avoidance behaviors in mice.
What have been some of the most memorable twists and turns of your career?
I think the most memorable, and unexpectedly fortunate, twist in my career so far was not getting into graduate school directly after my undergraduate studies. While this experience was painful, it led me to pursue a position as a research technician in a lab that studied how traumatic brain injury affected astrocyte physiology. My time as a research technician helped me mature as a scientist and had a lasting impact on my research interests.
Tell us what inspired your research and/or work.
My work in Dr. Reesha Patel's Lab largely combines my interests in astrocyte function and regulation of dopaminergic circuit function. As a graduate student in Dr. Talia Lerner's Lab, I studied how stress hormone dysregulation impacted dopaminergic release in the striatum; through this experience, I became interested in understanding how dopaminergic neuron activity was regulated.
Recent studies have indicated that altering astrocyte activity within the ventral tegmental area (VTA) could change dopamine neuron activity and resulting behavior, but I noticed a gap in the field's understanding of the endogenous activity dynamics between astrocytes and neurons in the VTA during behavior. To fill this gap, I'm pursuing studies in the Patel Lab in which I'm recording in vivo activity of both VTA astrocytes and neurons using fiber photometry while mice engage in appetitive and aversive conditioning tasks.
What is a mistake you have learned from in your career?
I have many mistakes to choose from, but one that sticks out is when I used the wrong recombinase-dependent virus in an experiment during graduate school. This mistake cost me months of work and led to a lot of confusion about my experimental results. Now, I make sure to triple check my viral constructs and ensure that I understand all of their working parts.
What do you find both rewarding and challenging about your research and/or work?
The most rewarding part of my job is mentoring others! The work that we do in the lab is complicated, with a lot of concepts to understand in order to appreciate the larger picture of an experiment; any time I'm able to clarify the 'why' behind an experiment's design or help a mentee acquire a skill, I feel fulfilled.
The most challenging aspect of my work is the delayed gratification. The experiments we work on take months to complete, so I've had to learn to be patient for results to come in and for me to come to conclusions about any experiment. This delayed gratification can push me to overwork myself to feel more 'productive' in the short term—unfortunately, this often leads to burnout, so I try my best to be cognizant of when I may be pushing myself too hard.
How do you unwind after a long day?
Recently, I've been enjoying running to relax after a long day! I also enjoy baking and watching Bravo reality TV shows (the Real Housewives franchise and Summer House are two that come to mind).
What books are on your bedside table?
I'm currently reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, and I have Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt lined up next.
What advice would you give your younger self or someone considering a similar path?
Ask for help! Academic research is not a career path that you can tackle all alone; it takes a village to learn how to navigate academia and bring new knowledge into the world!
What are you most proud of in your career to date?
I'm most proud of having been a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! That was the first grant I applied for in graduate school, and I ended up falling in love with the grant writing process while completing the application. Grant writing can be a really creative writing process, so I find it very fun! I'm also very proud of earning my doctorate. As a first-generation college graduate, I never dreamed of pursuing a PhD—I hardly knew what it was! Graduate school took a lot of perseverance, and so I'm proud of myself for getting through it and enjoying it along the way.
Publish Date: February 25, 2025
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