Bradley Cooke
Year Graduated: 
2001
Degree: 
Ph.D

Hi folks -- 

Brad Cooke here (cohort of 1996 - graduated 2001). 

I'm currently an assistant professor of Neuroscience at Georgia State University in Atlanta GA. Its a terrific department, with strengths in my particular field - behavioral neuroendocrinology. There's a Ph.D. program, and a growing undergraduate major in Neuroscience too. I still study sex differences in the brain and behavior, and still use animal models. Currently, I've three research programs - one, an animal model of sex differences in mood disorder susceptibility, two, study of neural plasticity in the amygdala during puberty and its relation to the emergence of opposite sex attraction, and three, cultured sex-specific neural networks growing on 60 channel multielectrode arrays.  

Seyda Özcaliskan (1996 - 2002) and me have two kids together: Leyla and Rüya Cooke. They're identical twins, eight years old, and the epitome of wonderfulness. 

If anyone's reading this that's considering the Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley, I couldn't recommend it more highly. The intellectual strengths of the faculty are amazing, and I particularly benefitted from its strengths in cognitive neuroscience. I've become a better neuroendocrinologist knowing about cognitive neuroscience than I would have otherwise been. Also, I really treasure the history of the department, and the importance that was placed on knowing the department's intellectual forebears. Some illustrious names that come to mind include Rosenzweig, Krech, Beach, Tolman, Diamond, and DeValois. Those individuals made profound contributions to understanding the mind/brain, and it is worth every moment spent learning about how they thought, and what they added. We truly do stand on the shoulders of giants, and a graduate in Psychology from UC Berkeley would have some very broad ones indeed to grow upon. 

All the best -

Brad.