Tim Gardner
Dr. Tim Gardner is an associate professor of neuroengineering and Robert & Leona DeArmond Chair of the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.
Dr. Gardner holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University and earned his doctorate in biology and physics at Rockefeller University. He completed his post-doctoral fellowships at Rockefeller University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Prior to coming to the University of Oregon he worked as a founding member of Neuralink Corp., a company building a fully implanted bidirectional interface to the human brain.
George Vengrovski
George is a PhD student as part of the Institute of Neuroscience (ION). He has a B.S in Neuroscience from Washington State University where he studied infant emotion as part of the Gartstein Lab. Nowadays, he is interested in using machine learning to understand the structure of birdsong, artificial neural network interoperability, as well as forming bidirectional links of communication with birds via generative learning.
In the future, George aims to work on technologies that create virtual/augmented reality experiences based on the user behavior and neurofeedback.
Melissa Bemrose
Melissa Bemrose is the Lab Manager for the Gardner Lab, providing support to student researchers and post-doctoral scholars. Her research within the lab centers around 3D printing and immunohistochemistry.
Melissa holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Wittenberg University. Before joining the Gardner Lab, she worked as the Research & Technology Core Manager at the Rogosin Institute – Xenia Division, a non-profit organization specializing in hydrogel-based cell encapsulation for targeted drug delivery and cell-based therapies.
Rose Hulsey-Vincent
Rose is a graduate student in the Institute of Neuroscience. She has a bachelor’s degree in biophysics with a math minor from Vassar College, where she worked with the Vassar Applied Optics Lab using optical techniques to quantify characteristics of C. elegans movement patterns.
Between college and graduate school, Rose worked at Janelia Research Campus as a technician, where she studied place learning behavior in fruit flies.
Rose is a mentor in the Junior Undergraduate-Mentorship Program (JUMP) and Outreach Co-Chair of Women in Graduate Sciences. Outside of research, she enjoys clicker training her cat, birding, and hiking.
Diana Ostojich
Diana is a graduate student in the Knight Campus Bioengineering program whose work focuses on creating new devices for neuroscience applications. While attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she spent much of her time as an undergraduate doing research in a cutting-edge biosensors lab. During this time, she learned extensive skills in microfabrication, materials science, and electrical engineering. This work drew her to the Gardner lab where she can apply those skills in sensor design to make more effective neural interfaces to advance our understanding and treatment of the peripheral and central nervous system.
Alexander Schachtner
Dr. Alexander Schachtner is a postdoctoral scholar in the Gardner Lab whose current research focuses on fabricating direct laser written, flexible neural recording and stimulation devices to address unmet needs in bioelectronic medicine and neuroscience research.
Alexander received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Oregon in 2015 and completed his PhD in physics at the University of Florida in 2021, where he specialized in developing carbon nanotube thin film deposition methods for 2-D semiconductor applications. Before joining the Gardner Lab, Alexander worked at Mattrix Technologies, Inc., a startup company working toward commercializing carbon nanotube-based OLED display technology.
Ananya Kapoor
Ananya Kapoor is a computational neuroscience PhD student in UO’s Institute of Neuroscience. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Statistics and a Master’s degree in Biostatistics from Rutgers University. Prior to joining the Gardner Lab, he worked as a graduate research assistant with Dr. Anna Konova where he studied the neural mechanisms of maladaptive decision-making in human opioid addiction.
At UO, Ananya’s research interests now focus on developing open-source machine learning methods for efficient behavioral annotation as well as studying the neural mechanisms that produce complex vocalizations.
Ethan Muchnik
Ethan Muchnik is an M.S student in the Oregon Center for Electrochemistry (OCE). He completed his bachelor’s degree in physics at University of Illinois (UIUC). Ethan is passionate about programming, data visualization, and biomedical research. His internship project focuses on analyzing High channel count neural recordings in singing birds.
Ellen Sova
Ellen Sova is an undergraduate researcher in the Gardner Lab studying the interface between technology, birdsong, and biology of brain. Currently, she is researching nerve transection and re-generation in canaries. Prior to joining the Gardner Lab, Ellen worked in the lab of Dr. Felix Deku designing, fabricating, and characterizing neural arrays.