Alumni

Dr. Kwang Woo Ko joined the lab in 2015.  His work looked at the roles of Sarm1 and inflammation in neurodegeneration, specifically in the context of glaucoma.  In 2021, he accepted a position at PTC Therapeutics where he will continue to work on eye diseases.

Ethan joined the DiAntonio Lab as a postdoc in 2005 and studied the mechanism of synapse development.  In 2010, he left to take a position as an Assistant Professor at Amherst College.  In 2018, he returned to the St. Louis area and is now teaching at the prestigious Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School.

In 2001, Dr. Collins was the first postdoc to join the DiAntonio lab. Her work examined the role of Highwire in synaptic development. During her time in the lab, she conducted a screen that identified wallenda, the fly homolog of DLK, as a suppressor of the highwire mutant phenotype. After her postdoc, she went to the University of Michigan where she is an Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and her lab studies signaling pathways that regulate synaptic development and the axonal response to injury.

Dr. Culican, a pediatric ophthalmologist, joined the lab in 2007. Her research in the lab looked at the role of Phr1 in targeting and synaptic refinement of retinal ganglion cell axons. She later established her own lab at WUSM. In the years since, she has been drawn towards roles in education of clinicians and is currently the Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

Dr. Geisler joined the lab as a clinical research fellow after being the Chief Resident in Neurology at WUSM.  As a physician treating patients with neuromuscular disorders, her clinical insights greatly enriched the intellectual life of the lab. In her research, Dr. Geisler demonstrated that SARM1 is required for the development of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, and helped to develop a gene therapeutic targeting SARM1 that effectively blocks pathological axon degeneration in vivo. Dr. Geisler is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at WUSM where her lab investigates the molecular mechanisms causing peripheral neuropathies and develops therapies for the treatment of these debilitating disorders.

Dr. Dan Summers was a shared postdoc in the DiAntonio and Milbrandt labs whose work investigated pathways in sensory neurons that regulate protein degradation of axonal survival factors. He is now an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Iowa where his lab continues studying cellular pathways responsible for protein homeostasis in developing and diseased neurons.

Dr. Wu was a postdoc in the lab from 2002-2008. His research focused on synaptic development and the role of Highwire.  He left the lab to take a faculty position at the LSU Health Sciences Center where his lab continues to work on the molecular pathways that shape and support synaptic connections as well as using Drosophila to identify novel molecules that play a role in neuronal development and degeneration.

Dr. Elisabetta Babetto was a postdoc in the lab from 2010 to 2014 before leaving to take a position at the Hunter James Kelly Research Institute (now known as the Institute of Myelin and Glia Exploration) at the University at Buffalo. Her current work focuses on axon-glia communication after injury and in neurodegenerative diseases.

In 2004, Dr. Yogesh Wairkar joined the lab as a postdoc.  His research looked at synaptic formation and regulation at the neuromuscular junction in Drosophila.  He left the lab to take an Assistant Professor position in the Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders at UTMB Health where he continues to study proteins involved in the active zones of the synapse.

Dr. Bhattacharya was a postdoc in the lab starting in 2008.  Her work modeled toxic neuropathy in Drosophila and identified a role for TMEM184b in axonal and synaptic maintenance.  After leaving the lab, she joined the St. Louis College of Pharmacy as an Assistant Proferssor before moving to her current position as an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona where her lab continues to study molecular pathways that promote axon degeneration.

Dr. Scott Karney-Grobe was a graduate student in the lab from 2013 to 2018.  His work in the lab focused on the novel role of Hsp90 in cellular pathways promoting regeneration. He defended his PhD thesis in 2018. After leaving the DiAntonio Lab, he joined the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation as a postdoctoral scientist.