Current Faculty Members in the Neuroscience Program
To visit any of the professors websites, please click on their names
Anantharam, Vellareddy ; Biomedical Sciences; cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and application of such information to the development of novel strategies for treating Parkinson's. Prion and other neurodenerative diseases
Anderson, Lloyd ; Animal Science; mechanisms regulating relaxin and progesterone secretion and their effects, effects of antiprogesterone, and neuroendocrine mechanisms regulating growth and reproduction in farm animals
Bloedel, James ; Biomedical Sciences; neural mechanisms of motor control and motor learning with a particular interest in cerebellar and Parkinson's patients.
Bracha, Vlastislav ; Biomedical Sciences; structure and function of the neural networks that are responsible for simple forms of associative learning.
Carlson, Steve ; Biomedical Sciences; Investigations of the molecular pharmacologic aspects of the relationships between receptors, antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, and the virulence of bacterial enteropathogens such as Salmonella.
Chan, Jason C.K. ; Psychology; Memory distortions and eyewitness suggestibility; the effects of aging on memory performance; applying cognition to education; prospective memory
Cooper, Eric ; Psychology; Dr. Cooper's research focusses on how humans represent objects, faces, and scenes in memory for the purpose of recognizing them. His research is directed towards understanding the hemispheric specialization that underlies visual recognition processes.
Cunnick, Joan ; Animal Science; psychoneuroimmunology and is directed toward understanding how various stressors (physical, psychological and interoceptive) affect the immune system
Day, Tim ; Biomedical Sciences; Our research is focused on the molecular and functional biology of the nervous systems of parasitic worms. We aim to understand the basic biology of these worms with the additional goal of identifying novel drug targets for control of parasitism. The worms that we study range from the human flatworm parasite Schistosoma mansoni (the agent of human schistomiasis in Africa, Asia and South America) all the way to the nematode parasite of soybeans, Heterodera glycines.
Ellinwood, N. Matthew ; Animal Science; Companion animal models of human genetic disease, pathogenesis and therapy for neuropathic lysosomal storage diseases, brain targeted gene therapy, enzyme replacement therapy, pharmacoperone therapy, novel enzyme constructs
Greenlee, Heather ; Biomedical Sciences; The effect of the Alzheimer's protein, beta-amyloid on neural stem cell differentiation. The developmental proteome of retinal progenetor cells. The importance of vesicle trafficking protein, SNAP-25 for photoreceptor differentiation and development.
Honavar, Vasant ; Computer Sci; Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Modeling, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology (especially characterization of macromolecular sequence-structure-function relationships, protein-protein interactions, genetic network inference), Neural Computation, Computational Neuroscience, Computational Learning Theory, Complex Adaptive Systems, Neuroinformatics.
Hsu, Walter ; Biomedical Sciences;
Jeftinija, Srdija ; Biomedical Sciences; research focuses on the physiology of glial cells and glia-neuron interactions in central and peripheral nervous system.
Kanthasamy, Anumantha ; Biomedical Sciences; Parkinson's disease: cellular/molecular mechanisms in dopaminergic degeneration, environmental risk factors, and neuroprotective strategies. Cardiac arrest-induced neurological deficits: posthypoxic myoclonus, seizures, animals models, novel drug discovery.
Kanthasamy, Arthi ; Biomedical Sciences; Identify and characterize the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying cerebral ischemia and Parkinson's disease (PD) associated pathogenesis. Investigation of the role of kinase dependent cell signaling pathways in neuronal degeneration. Developing gene therapy technologies aimed at limiting ischemia-induced brain damage. Evaluation of the role of autophagic protein degradation machinery in experimental models of PD and ischemia. Molecular mechanisms of prion pathogenesis.
Kimber, Michael ; Biomedical Sciences; Neuromuscular biology of parasitic worms, and in particular the role played by neuropeptide transmitters, in an effort to identify novel targets for antiparasitic drugs.
Lin, Victor Shang-Yi ; Chemistry; Our current research interest is to develop non-invasive biocompatible nanoprobes for chemical sensing of intercellular neurochemical communications with nanoscale spatial resolution, and for control of cellular behavior at the macroscopic level.
Mallapragada, Surya ; Chem Engineering; Our research program is focused on designing polymers and biomaterials with tailored micro/nanostructures to precisely control function and properties at the molecular and cellular levels. Our two broad focus areas are: 1) smart polymers and 2) neural tissue engineering.
Martin, Richard ; Biomedical Sciences; Our research activity stems from an interest in ion-channel receptors and their responses to drugs. We have developed C. elegans and Ascaris suum preparations for recording at the single-channel level and examining the mode of action of drugs on their ion-channels. Our research interests extends to the mode of action of antiparasitic drugs and resistance to them and covers developing areas of molecular pharmacology.
Nilsen-Hamilton, Marit ; BBMB; regulation of gene expression by growth factors in animal cells; tissue-specific regulation of gene expression; imaging gene expression; interaction between mother and fetus during reproduction
Robertson, Alan ; Biomedical Sciences; Nematode electrophysiology.
Robson, Richard ; BBMB; structure and function of contractile and cytoskeletal proteins in muscle cells, with emphasis on critical proteins integrating and linking the contractile elements to each other and to other key cellular components.
Sakaguchi, Donald ; GDCB; Developmental neurobiology, stem cell biology, stem cell transplants as a strategy for CNS rescue and repair, development and plasticity of vertebrate visual systems.
Shen, Sheldon ; GDCB; ionic regulation of cellular activities with particular emphasis on calcium signaling during fertilization and membrane resealing.
Singh, Ravindra ; Biomedical Sciences; interest of his group has been to understand the mechanism of alternative splicing, a vital process that increases the coding potential of genome in all higher eukaryotes.
Smiley-Oyen, Ann ; Kinesiology; How the basal ganglia and cerebellum contribute to motor control and motor learning. Parkinson's disease and cerebellar dysfunction studied, and developmental dyslexia and developmental coordination disorder. Long-range goal: to impact therapeutic practice.
Tuggle, Chris ; Animal Science; using genomics to understand how genes control biological processes at the molecular and cellular level. I am primarily interested in how gene expression controls many aspects of growth, reproduction, and disease resistance.
Uemura, Etsuro ; Biomedical Sciences; the regulatory mechanisms of neuronal glucose in Alzheimer's patients
West, Robert ; Psychology; the cognitive neuroscience of goal-directed action and cognitive control, the cognitive neuroscience of aging, and the intersection of cognition and emotion.
