Our Team

Yorkiris is a 2nd year PhD student in the Pharmacology and Toxicology department born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the south Bronx. She obtained undergraduate degrees from Vassar and Dartmouth College where she majored in behavioral neuroscience and bioelectrical engineering, respectively, via a joint-degree program. Yorkiris completed three summer undergraduate research experiences, including one under Dr. Thomas Green, where she developed a strong passion for understanding mechanisms underlying substance abuse and emotion. For her senior thesis at Vassar College, Yorkiris conducted a behavioral intervention that assessed how natural settings modify the effectiveness of mindfulness practices on self-reported depression symptoms, self-efficacy, and self-esteem measures. Her senior capstone project at Dartmouth sought to establish proof-of-concept for a low-cost, low-power eye-tracking solution for seizure detection outside of a hospital setting using infrared sensors. In 2022, Yorkiris joined the Green Lab as a master student, where she developed and validated behavioral paradigms for assessing frustration-related behavior. She has since conducted several investigations assessing the role of psychological (Mármol Contreras et al., 2023), genetic (Mármol Contreras et al., 2025), and environmental (in prep) factors on the fundamental relationship between frustration and motivation. She joined the Green Lab as a PhD student in 2024, where she is now focused on identifying neurobiological mechanisms that could be targeted to restore frustration’s inhibitory control over motivation in addicted populations using fiber photometry and molecular imaging techniques. In the long term, she plans to become a principal investigator at an academic institution. When she is not in lab, Yorkiris loves to play volleyball and write music.