Rothem Kovner is an associate research scientist in the Nenad Sestan laboratory at Yale University. She completed her Ph.D. in 2018 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she studied the molecular underpinnings of childhood anxious temperament in primates. Her current research focuses on the development of cells and neural circuitry in subcortical brain regions, particularly in the context of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Kovner uses single-cell omics and spatial transcriptomics approaches, combined with computational analyses, to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying regional identity and circuit formation in primates. Her work has a particular emphasis on how early-life transcriptional programs in subcortical regions such as the amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and hypothalamus diverge between males and females, and how these differences may contribute to disorders with a pronounced sex bias. Kovner is currently generating high-resolution, cross-age and cross-species single-nucleus multiomic and spatial transcriptomic atlases of regions of the subcortex as part of the BICAN, dGTEx, and Simons SSCD consortia. These data will be used to identify sex-differential and autism-associated gene expression patterns and cell populations, define their developmental origins, and determine how early subcortical circuits contribute to sex-biased neurodevelopmental risk.