News

The MSTP 2020 Annual Research Conference will be held remotely on Friday, September 25, 2020. The Stanley G. Korenman Keynote Speakers for this conference will be Dr. Na Ji from UC Berkeley and Dr. Rafael Yuste from Columbia Univ.

Na Ji

Na Ji  is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Physics and Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. Dr. Ji is renowned for her development of optical imaging technology and its application in neurobiology. In addition to serving as an associate professor in the Departments of Molecular & Cell Biology and Physics, she is a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Dr. Ji comes from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus. She earned her PhD in chemistry at UC Berkeley. Dr. Ji has made major advances in sharpening microscopy images using adaptive optics for studying the activity of neural circuits. To learn more about Dr. Ji, please visit her website.

Rafael Yuste

Rafael Yuste is an HHMI Investigator, Professor of Biological Sciences and Neuroscience at Columbia University and Co-director of the Kavli Foundations Institute for Neural Circuitry. He obtained his M.D. at the Universidad Autonoma in Madrid. After a brief period in Brenners laboratory in Cambridge, he did his Ph.D work with Katz and Wiesel at Rockefeller University and postdoctoral research with Tank and Denk at Bell Labs. Dr. Yuste has pioneered the application of imaging techniques in neuroscience, such as calcium imaging of neuronal circuits, two-photon imaging, photostimulation using caged compounds and holographic spatial light modulation microscopy. These technical developments have resulted in several patents, two of which are commercially licensed. Yuste has obtained many awards for his work, including New York City Mayor’s and the Society for Neuroscience’s Young Investigator Awards. Finally, he is currently involved in launching the Brain Activity Map Project, a large-scale international project, sponsored by the Office of Science and Technology from the White House, that aims at measuring the activity from every neuron in a neural circuit. To learn more about Dr. Yuste, please visit his website.