Amy C. Arnold, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Departments of Neural and Behavioral Sciences and Medicine
E-mail: aarnold5@pennstatehealth.psu.edu
Phone: (717) 531-3674
Dr. Arnold received a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 2009. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University in 2013 and was appointed as Research Instructor of Medicine at Vanderbilt until 2016. She joined the Penn State College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in April 2016 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2022. She has training in whole animal physiology and pharmacology methods to assess integrated cardiovascular and metabolic function, with specific expertise in the renin-angiotensin hormone system. Dr. Arnold also received a Masters Degree in Clinical Investigation from Vanderbilt in 2014, and thus also has expertise to assess cardiometabolic regulation in clinical populations. She has over 70 publications and has been funded for over a decade in this area of research by the NIH, American Heart Association, and institutional grants.
In addition to research, Dr. Arnold serves in several leadership roles within Penn State including: Associate Director of the Comprehensive Health Studies program (Goal 1 of the strategic plan), Co-Lead of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Translational Science Fellowship program, Director of the Metabolic Phenotyping Core, and Assistant Director of the American Heart Association Undergraduate Summer Fellowship program.
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Sarah Bingaman, MSc.
Research Technologist III, Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences
E-mail: ssimmonds@pennstatehealth.psu.edu
Phone: (717) 531-0003 Extension 281323
Sarah received a B.S. degree in Biology from Gettysburg College in 2008, followed by a M.S. degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from Durham University in England in 2012. She has been a research technologist in the Arnold laboratory since 2016. She is a critical member of our team and is responsible for general laboratory management, purchasing, and maintaining mouse colonies. Sarah also handles complex mouse surgical procedures and runs experiments in mice to measure blood pressure, insulin action, and energy balance.
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Amanda Miller, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences
E-mail: aross1@pennstatehealth.psu.edu
Dr. Miller received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Penn State College of Medicine in 2017, and then joined the Arnold laboratory as a postdoctoral scholar. She has training in integrative physiology and pharmacology methods to measure cardiovascular and autonomic nervous system function in humans and mouse models. Her postdoctoral studies have focused on the role of angiotensin-(1-7) in blood pressure regulation in obesity and aging. She has over 30 publications, received predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowship grants from the American Heart Association, and is currently supported by an NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) grant.
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Bailey Keller, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences
E-mail: bkeller5@pennstatehealth.psu.edu
Dr. Keller received her Ph.D in Neuroscience and Clinical and Translational Sciences from the Penn State College of Medicine in 2023, and joined the Arnold laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow in the Penn State T32 Primary Care Research Fellowship. She has a broad skill set in molecular and behavioral models of neurological disorders. During her thesis research, she studied changes autonomic nervous system function, specifically in the dorsal vagal complex, in rodent models of alcohol use disorder (AUD), and their association with drinking behavior and metabolic dysfunction. Her postdoctoral research is focused on further understanding autonomic changes in AUD and their association with emotional states and mental health. Her current work aims to characterize heart rate variability in AUD recovery in humans and evaluate its potential as a diagnostic tool for predicting relapse. Other ongoing projects focus on studying the understanding role of angiotensin-(1-7) in modulating neural signaling from the dorsal vagal complex in mouse models of obesity
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Victoria Vernail, B.S.
Ph.D. Can
didate, Neuroscience Program, Penn State College of Medicine
Email: vvernail@pennstatehealth.psu.edu
Victoria received a B.S. degree in Biology and Psychology from Chatham University in April 2020, before entering graduate school in August 2020. She is currently a 4th year Neuroscience Ph.D candidate in Dr. Arnold’s laboratory. Her main research interest is in understanding the neural networks that control cardiovascular function to develop new pharmacologic targets for the treatment of cardiovascular-related diseases including obesity hypertension. She is currently funded by an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31) to examine if angiotensin-(1-7) stimulates neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus to promote enhanced GABAergic transmission onto neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus to lower blood pressure. Her long-term career goal is to become an independent investigator at an academic research institution where she can conduct research in a collaborative environment as well as teach undergraduate and graduate students interested in clinically relevant cardiovascular neuroscience research.
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Lillia Lucas, B.S.
Research Technologist I, Department of Neural and Behavioral Sciences
Email: llucas@pennstatehealth.psu.edu
Lillia received a B.S. degree in Neuroscience and Biomedical Sciences from Susquehanna University in May 2022. She joined the Arnold laboratory as a technician in August 2022. She has been an amazing addition to the laboratory and assists Sarah with management of inventory, ordering of supplies, day-to-day care of mouse colonies, and whole animal physiology techniques such as tail cuff blood pressure and insulin and glucose tolerance tests. She is also a master of molecular techniques and routinely runs experiments involving immunohistochemistry, RNAscope in situ hybridization, ELISA, and quantitative real-time PCR.
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Past Undergraduate Students
- Rebecca Fleeman, 2017, American Heart Association Undergraduate Summer Fellowship
- Monica Feeley, 2018, American Heart Association Undergraduate Summer Fellowship
- Tianna Fredericks, 2019, American Heart Association Undergraduate Summer Fellowship
- Rebecca Harbert, 2021, American Heart Association Undergraduate Summer Fellowship
- Pooja Menon, 2022, American Heart Association Undergraduate Summer Fellowship
Past Graduate Students
- Melissa White, 2017-2019, Laboratory Animal Medicine program
- Darren Mehay, 2019-2022, Anatomy Ph.D. program
Past Medical Students and Fellows
- Justin Loloi, 2017-2018, Medical Student Research Project
- Daniela Medina, 2018-2020, Medical Student Research Project
- Danielle Prentice, 2020-2022, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellow Research Project