Memory-making focus at the BioSci research retreat debut
Wayne State University’s Department of Biological Sciences held its annual research retreat on Saturday, Oct. 26, drawing close to 100 attendees to the university’s largest student center venue, the ballroom. This year, for the first time, undergraduates from the popular Neuroscience program joined faculty, postdocs, and doctoral students in presenting their latest research through posters and talks.
Two presentations captured the audience’s attention. Dr. Irina Calin-Jageman, a former Wayne State graduate student and now a professor in the Biological Sciences and Neuroscience Program at Dominican University, delivered a plenary talk. She discussed the role of transcription in memory formation and forgetting, using the marine snail Aplysia californica as a model organism.
The second featured speaker, new Wayne State Assistant Professor Dr. Eleni Gourgou, focused on decision-making and memory formation in Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny nematode. Dr. Gourgou, who joined Wayne State after positions at the University of Michigan, employs genetics and imaging techniques to study the advanced spatial learning and navigation abilities of C. elegans’s 300-neuron nervous system.
Dr. Gourgou’s research aligns well with teaching needs in Wayne State’s Neuroscience program and other neuroscience groups in the department’s cell, development and neurobiology division.