Alev Ecevitoglu, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she works with Dr. Junghyup Suh and Dr. Kerry Ressler. She received her B.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Boğaziçi University and completed an Erasmus program in Bioscience at the University of Kent. She went on to earn an MA in Psychobiology at Boğaziçi University and an MS and PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Connecticut, where she trained under the mentorship of Dr. John Salamone.

Dr. Ecevitoglu’s research focuses on the neural mechanisms of motivation, with an emphasis on understanding individual differences in motivational dysfunction. Using fiber photometry and genetically encoded dopamine sensors (dLight), her work examines how real-time dopamine dynamics encode effort, reward, and behavioral engagement. By integrating behavioral paradigms with in vivo neural recordings, her research aims to identify circuit-level processes that contribute to vulnerability and resilience in psychiatric disorders characterized by dysregulated motivation.