Research
My curiosities have taken me from systems/circuit neuroscience, to genetics, to engineering. I like to think and ask my questions somewhere in between.
I started my research journey in Bernardo Sabatini's lab, curious about how and why we interact differently with the world as we grow up and grow old. Under the mentorship of Kevin Mastro, I investigated the impact of aging on (1) interneuron microcircuits in mouse PFC and (2) dopamine in mouse ventral striatum. Our full research program bridged an extensive behavioral assay (2-arm bandit) with these neural recordings.
This work led me to appreciate that (1) the brain must be understood as a spatially distributed, but highly functionally coordinated system, and (2) the tools available to the scientific community are not designed to probe more than one part of it at a time. I spent a year in George Church's lab, working with Dr. Juseong Lee on viral genome engineering strategies for multiplexed control across cell types.
Now rotating at Caltech to find a new home for my research interests!
Publications
In progress:
2026
Mastro K, Lee W-C, Wang W, Meng S, Stevens B, Sabatini B. Delayed developmental maturation of frontal cortical circuits impacts decision-making. In Resubmission.
2026
Mastro K, Melain A, Stanwicks L, Meng S, Stevens B, Sabatini B. Alterations in reward-based decision-making in mouse and marmoset across the lifespan. In Prep.
Out in the world:
2026
Meng S, Sabatini B. Rewired by Time : A Dopaminergic Account of Cognitive Flexibility across the Mouse Lifespan. Dissertation. Collections of the Harvard University Archives (Theses/Prize Papers), Cambridge, MA, United States.
2025
Mastro K, Lee W-C, Wang W, Meng S, Lin Y, Johnson MB, Sabatini B, Stevens B. Age-related changes in prefrontal cortex drives cellular, circuit and reward-based decision making in mouse and marmoset. Nanosymposium presented at: Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting (SfN); 2025 Nov; San Diego, CA, United States.
2024
Meng S, Lee W-C, Lord-Arond K, Mastro K, Wang W, Sabatini B. Identifying prefrontal cortex excitatory neural correlates to age-related shifts in decision-making strategy through fiber photometry system. Poster session presented at: Kempner Institute Symposium; 2024 Aug; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.