Thursday, October 5
Steven D. Munger, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.
Our series
opens with one of our former students, Dr. Steven Munger, who has gone
on to become one of the emerging leaders using molecular approaches to
understand taste. Dr. Munger’s research in taste spans the structure
and function of sweet and umami taste receptors, the structural basis of
sweet ligands, and the genetics of bitter taste. He also studies
the molecular basis of olfactory transduction using gene-targeting strategies.
A must for everyone with an interest in the chemical senses.
Thursday, November 2
Debra A. Zellner Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ.
Dr. Debra Zellner,
a former postdoc of Dr. Paul Rozin, is a trained cognitive psychologist
who pioneered that multimodal stimuli (e.g., color) affect the perceived
intensity of olfactory stimuli, with interesting differential effects on
orthonasal and retronasal olfaction. She has also been involved
in cross-cultural research on food preference for things like chocolate.
A must for those interested in the regulation of food intake and human
nutrition.
Thursday, December 7
Dana M Small, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Yale University Medical School, Assistant Fellow, The John B Pierce Laboratory, New Haven, CT.
Dr. Dana Small
trained in Neurology and is another one of the emerging leaders in taste.
Her research focuses on food reward and flavor processing in the human
brain using radioligand and functional neuroimaging. Another must
for those interested in the regulation of food intake and human nutrition,
in addition to those interested in human brain imaging.
Thursday, January 18
Leslie P. Tolbert, Ph.D., Vice President for Research, Graduate Studies, and Economic Development, Regents' Professor and Professor of Neurobiology and Cell Biology and Anatomy, ARL Division of Neurobiology, The University of Arizona, Tucson AZ.
Dr. Leslie
Tolbert is a developmental neuroscientist and established leader in olfaction.
Her research focuses on the development of neural connectivity in the olfactory
bulb, using the moth, Manduca sexta, as an animal model, and has led to
new insight into how complex neural structures such as olfactory glomeruli
come to be. A must not only for entomologists and developmental biologists,
but neuroscientists interested in cellular mechanisms of neural regeneration.
Thursday, February 15th
Steven Hsiao, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Krieger Mind/Brain Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.
Dr. Steven
Hsiao, a close colleague of the late Dr. Ken Johnson, brings perspective
to understanding chemosensory coding from outside our field. Dr.
Hsiao studies how object, size, shape, and texture, are represented in
the brain and how those representation are affected by selective attention.
A must for anyone with a fundamental interest in the neurophysiology of
the brain and/or perception.
Thursday, March 22nd
Mario de Bono, Ph.D., MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.
Our series
closes with Dr. Mario de Bono, and internationally recognized neuroscientist
and collaborator of Dr. Art Edison here at UF. Dr. de Bono studies
how nervous systems generate behavior using the genetic model, C. elegans.
He is particularly interested in how genes control the switch from solitary
to social feeding in these animals – the type of powerful research pioneered
by Dr. Cori Bargmann, who interestingly gave the Center’s inaugural seminar.
A must for all neuroscientists with an interest in how genes regulate behavior.