Kasey Girven is an Associate Scientific Project and Alliance Manager for the Allen Institute/ Neural Dynamics accelerator, working closely with the Optical Physiology projects. Prior to joining the Allen Institute, Kasey completed her postdoctoral training in Michael Bruchas' lab at the University of Washington, where she studied how neuropeptide S signaling influences reward-seeking behavior through circuits connecting the locus coeruleus and orbitofrontal cortex, combining optical imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral neuroscience approaches to better understand the neural dynamics underlying motivated behavior.

Kasey received her PhD from the University of Maryland Baltimore Graduate School, where she trained under Dr. Dennis Sparta. Her doctoral research focused on excitatory insular cortex projections and their role in cue-reward encoding. During her graduate training, she was a founding member of the Baltimore Brain Series, a collaborative talk series between NIDA, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland Baltimore designed to provide postdoctoral researchers and graduate students with invited speaking opportunities and to foster connections across the Baltimore Neuro Hub.