Ivy Hoang

Ivy Hoang, PhD is a postdoctoral scholar working with Dr. William Giardino in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. As a first-generation college graduate of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents, Ivy earned her BS in Physiology/Neuroscience with a minor in Psychology at UCSD. She then went on to earn her PhD in Psychology with a focus in Behavioral Neuroscience at UCLA. Her graduate thesis focused on characterizing an understudied hypothalamic-dopamine circuit for methamphetamine-induced enhancements of reward cue-driven behavior.

As a postdoc, her current work seeks to examine the neural correlates underlying sleep-dependent drug memories. Leveraging her expertise in reward learning and rodent models of addiction, Ivy is passionate about studying the neuropsychopathology of drug addiction and broadly aims to uncover the influence of homeostatic systems (e.g., sleep) over learning and memory processes that become maladaptive in substance dependence.

In addition to research, Ivy has been deeply committed to quality mentorship and advocation of underrepresented undergraduate and graduate trainees throughout her research career. Outside of lab, Ivy loves to doodle and snack on potato chips!