Samara Hecht, PhD, is the Seed Grant Program Manager for the Dana Center where she supports trainee development, interdisciplinary collaboration, and helps researchers connect neuroscience with real-world impact. Dr. Hecht is a neuroscientist whose research has examined the neural basis of social behavior using in vivo imaging, computational approaches, and genetic mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders. She received her PhD in Neuropharmacology from the University of Washington and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is also an Associate Project Scientist in Dr. Daniel Aharoni’s lab at UCLA, where she is building a platform to support the development of open-source neural imaging tools.