Personnel

Research in the Karumbaiah lab is focused on identifying shared mechanisms by which brain glycosaminoglycans influence brain tumor progression and traumatic brain injury pathophysiology. Findings from these studies have led to the development of novel glycomaterial implants for brain tissue repair, as well as cytostatic approaches to block invasion promoting glycosaminoglycan signaling in the brain tumor microenvironment. Ongoing work is focused on (1) the development of an integrative regenerative rehabilitation approach to accelerate functional recovery following severe traumatic brain injuries; and (2) the design and development of in vitro therapeutic potency testing platforms and therapeutic approaches to stem tumor invasion and enhance the effectiveness of standard-of-care therapeutics.

Dr. Barany received her Ph.D. in Dynamical Neuroscience at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed postdoctoral fellowships focusing on stroke neurorehabilitation at Emory University and sensorimotor neuroscience at UGA. She joined the faculty in the Department of Kinesiology at UGA in 2020, and is currently the director of the Brain and Action Laboratory and co-director of the Neurostimulation Laboratory. She also teaches in the pre-clinical curriculum at UGA’s School of Medicine. Dr. Barany’s research focuses on the neural control of goal-directed movement, using a combination of behavioral (movement kinematics, augmented reality, eye-tracking), neuroimaging (functional MRI, magnetic resonance spectroscopy) and neurostimulation (transcranial magnetic stimulation) methods. Ongoing research projects include (1) understanding neural representations for manual interception of moving objects and (2) corticospinal excitability during complex action preparation.  The long-term goal this work is to establish a mechanistic framework rooted in basic human motor neuroscience to investigate impairments in goal-directed movements prevalent in neurological disease or after brain injury.