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Department: Neurobiology and Behavior More Information Ron Harris-WarrickRon Harris-Warrick is currently the department chairperson for Neurobiology and Behavior and the instructor for ‘Drugs and the Brain’ (BIONB 392). He attended Stanford University as an undergraduate and received his PhD there as well in Bacterial Genetics while studying and isolating restriction enzymes. Despite being trained as a microbiologist throughout graduate school, Professor Harris-Warrick often found himself wondering about how the brain worked, how memories were formed, and other neuronal processes on his free time. After receiving his PhD, he decided to explore and join the Neuroscience field as a postdoctoral scholar: his first at Stanford with Developmental Neurobiology and his second at Harvard with Neurophysiology. After his postdocs, Professor Harris-Warrick joined Cornell focusing much of his research on neural networks, plasticity in the nervous system and the role it plays in simple behaviors, etc. For more details regarding his current work, visit http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/harris-warrick/harris-warrick.html. For quite some time, Professor Harris-Warrick has been employing lobsters as his model to study the neural networks since they are relatively simple and the cells involved in this network are easily identifiable. However, for over a year, the Harris-Warrick lab has been using the spinal cord network of mice as a model. The progress in this much more complicated model has been tremendously exciting due to new developments which allow for the identification of specific groups of cells.Professor Harris-Warrick enjoys working with undergraduates because they often think “outside of the box”. He appreciates the creative ideas which many undergraduates suggest in addition to the enthusiasm they bring into the lab. His office is in W159 Seeley G. Mudd Hall and he may be reached via e-mail at rmh4@cornell.edu |