Former Postdocs
M. Desmond Ramirez
Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Oregon
dra@uoregon.edu
Des completed his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he worked with Todd Oakley on Octopus "skin sight". Before that he did his MS at Michigan State with Fred Dyer, where he studied the role of vision in the honeybee dance language. So, it's clear that Des is a man of vision. He joined the lab because he thought we work on "see slugs" not sea slugs. He is combining many of his talents to look at single neuron transcriptomes in Berghia. He joined Cris Niell's lab in 2023 to work on octopus again.
Brandon Drescher
Account manager at Leica Microsystems
Linked In
brandon.drescher@gmail.com
Brandon came to us from way down yonder in the bayous of Mississippi. He earned his PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he worked on the ecology and reproductive morphology of molluscs in Johnson Bayou. He came to New England because he heard that they have clam chowder. He is an expert in electron microscopy and histology and led our connectomics project in collaboration with Jeff Lichtman's lab at Harvard.
Adriano Senatore
Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto
Lab website
E-mail: adrianosenatore@gmail.com
Adriano singlehandedly brought, not just our lab, but the entire Neuroscience Institute at GSU into the Transcriptomics age. He has now returned to his beloved Canada by way of Woods Hole, where he was Grass Fellow, working on a project entitled "Evaluating the roles of electrical excitability and voltage-gated calcium channels in Trichoplax adhaerens, an enigmatic animal that lacks neurons and muscle."
Akira Sakurai
Research Scientist II
Neuroscience Institute
Georgia State University
Home page
akira@gsu.edu
Akira was the electrophysiology sensei in the lab for over 16 years. He is truly an artist at his work. He is currently working on Drosophila neurons
Robert Calin-Jageman
Professor at Dominican University
rcalinjageman@dom.edu
Bob's latest claim to fame is that he co-authored the textbook: Introduction to the New Statistics. It's a beautiful book and will hopefully help rid the world of the dreaded T-test. When he was in our lab, Bob led the effort on the NeuronBank project. This is a neuroinformatics approach to organizing information about identified neurons and their synaptic connections. He also did computer simulations of the Tritonia swim network and created a tool called NeuronPM, which allows lab computers to be linked together to perform large parameter sweeps using the NEURON simulation environment. He spends his time stalking Nobel Laureates and lecturing about how to stimulate your brain. He also debunks bad psychology experiments
Evan Hill
Research Assistant Professor at Rosalind Franklin University
evan.hill@rosalindfranklin.edu
Evan did calcium signaling in Tritonia swim CPG neurons. He examined the extent to which the calcium signals are caused by the membrane potential oscillations versus synaptic inputs that act through second messengers. He also looked at calcium dynamics caused by stimulation of the serotonergic CPG member DSI (dorsal swim interneuron). Evan showed that there is an increase in calcium during presynaptic facilitation. He takes after his cousin Benny in his sense of humor. Evan is now working with us again on the Berghia Brain Project.
Stefan Clemens
Professor at East Carolina University
ClemensS@ecu.edu
Stefan studied the role of second messenger signaling in the Tritonia swim CPG. He found that it was necessary for the production of hte swim motor pattern and that the neuromodulatory actions of the the DSIs were mediated by second messengers. Stefan is fond of his cousin Samuel and like to wear silly glasses.
Lyudmila Popova
Last seen at Mosow State University (in the real Moscow)
David Fickbohm
Last spotted as a professor at Santa Monica College