Guest Speakers
Featured Faculty Speaker
"BAG3 as a mediator of vacuolar processes and tau clearance: implications for Alzheimer’s disease"
Gail V. Johnson, PhD
Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine
Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology
Faculty Speaker Bio:
Gail VW Johnson is a professor in the department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine with a secondary appointment in the department of Pharmacology. She got a Master’s degree in Entomology at UMass where she studied how mosquito blood meals triggered vitellogenin synthesis and vitellin uptake by the ovaries. She then taught biology and chemistry in a community college for several years before going to the University of Delaware for her PhD. The focus of her studies was on how inhalational anesthetics affected metabolic processes in cholinergic neurons. She then went to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alabama to work on Alzheimer’s disease. She originally thought she would stay for a few years and then move on but her research and funding were going well so she became faculty, moved up the ranks and stayed there for 22 years until she was recruited to the University of Rochester in 2007, which is where she always wanted to be given that she is a New Yorker! Since her postdoc years she her research has focused on tau biology, primarily in the context of Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies.
Featured Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker
"Developing AOSLO imaging in the marmoset to study transsynaptic retrograde degeneration"
Amy Bucklaew, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Patterson Lab
Postdoc Speaker Bio:
Dr. Amy Bucklaew is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Patterson Lab. Her research focuses on the connections between cortical damage and retinal health. Specifically, she investigates the mechanisms behind neurodegeneration in the non-human primate (NHP) eye following damage to the occipital cortex, which has broader implications for understanding how primary brain injuries impact downstream visual structures. Dr. Bucklaew earned her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester in 2025. During her doctoral work in the Mitchell Lab, she utilized electrophysiology and optogenetics to investigate how extra-retinal signals are encoded in brain areas MT/MTC, and how those areas contribute to maintaining visual stability during saccadic eye movements. In addition to receiving several prestigious awards—including the Visual Training Fellowship (T32) and the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F31)—she holds leadership roles in the field at the national level, serving on the Vision Science Society (VSS) Student and Postdoc Advisory Committee.
Featured Student Speaker
"Tiny Tubes: Perivascular spaces surround brain capillaries"
Michael Giannetto, MS
Graduate Student
Nedergaard Lab
Graduate Speaker Bio:
Michael Giannetto is a PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He previously earned a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from Rochester Institute of Technology. His research in Dr. Maiken Nedergaard’s lab utilizes novel in vivo imaging in mouse models to study fluid-filled perivascular spaces and astrocyte regulation of cerebrospinal fluid circulation, key components of the brain’s Glymphatic System.