Husniye Kantarci

  • Assistant Professor
  • Neuroscience
Profile image of Husniye Kantarci

Biography

Dr. Husniye Kantarci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from Antakya, Turkiye, Husniye pursued her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Bogazici University in Istanbul. Her interest in neural development began in Dr. Bruce Riley’s lab at Texas A&M University, where she studied extracellular signals in the development of Stato-Acoustic Ganglion neurons during her PhD. For her postdoctoral research, she joined Dr. Brad Zuchero’s lab at Stanford University, investigating how glial signals regulate neural development and excitability.

Husniye has earned several accolades for her research, including the Lawrence S. Dillon Distinguished Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research and Teaching from Texas A&M University, the Walter V. and Idun Berry Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Stanford School of Medicine Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Stanford ChEM-H Postdocs at the Interface Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Jump Start Award for Excellence in Research from Stanford University. She has also received various travel and best oral presentation awards throughout her career. Most recently, she was honored to receive the 2024 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

Research

During her postdoc, Husniye and her colleagues discovered that Schwann cells secrete PGE2, which induces excitability in sensory neurons by upregulating voltage-gated sodium channels. Her lab aims to investigate several exciting research directions, including how glial-derived PGE2 induces neural excitability, the role of glial cells in promoting neural diversity in the PNS, the glial regulation of normal excitability in the brain, and the role of aberrant glial-derived PGE2 on neurological and neurodevelopmental diseases.

Fields of Interest

  • Molecular Biology, Genetics & Genomics
  • Electrophys, Optogenetics & Chemogenetics
  • Optical Imaging
  • Cellular/Molecular/Structure
  • Cognition/Sensory Systems

Centers and Institutes

  • Institute for Neuroscience

Publications