Stephen Adams is a Project Scientist and PI in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California San Diego. He is a chemical biologist who collaborated with Roger Tsien for over 30 years devising novel fluorescent and photoactive sensors, and labeling strategies for correlated light and electron microscopy (CLEM). His current research includes developing chemical tools for color EM and CLEM.

Brad Aimone is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff in the Cognitive and Emerging Computing Group (1421) at Sandia National Laboratories, where he is a researcher in computational neuroscience modeling and helps lead the Neural Exploration Research Laboratory (NERL), which is a major R&D program targeting the development of neural based computing algorithms and computing architectures.

Prior to joining the technical staff at Sandia, Brad was a postdoctoral research associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He received his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego and earned his Bachelor and Master degrees in chemical engineering from Rice University. His primary research focus has long been adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus, where he was the first to use biologically realistic computational modeling approaches to describe its roles in episodic memory formation. He has more recently been involved in the development of novel algorithms based on neural circuit dynamics and the development of computational architectures suitable for implementing this novel approach to processing information. The motivating theme for his work is translational computational neuroscience – using engineering approaches in neuroscience to create applications in fields ranging from neurology and psychiatry to brain-inspired computing. Brad has published over fifty peer-reviewed journal and conference articles in journals including Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience as well as several book chapters and a number of invited talks and conference presentations.

Brad helped lead the Hardware Acceleration of Adaptive Neural Algorithms (HAANA) Grand Challenge, which was a major internal R&D effort focused on the development of neuromorphic technologies for DOE applications. He currently leads several research efforts on designing neural algorithms for scientific computing applications and neuromorphic machine learning implementations.

Rachana Ananthakrishnan is Executive Director & Head of Products at the University of Chicago, and has a Joint Staff Appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. In her role at the university, she leads Globus (www.globus.org) department, which delivers research data management services and platform to national and international research institutions. She also serves on the WestGrid Board of Directors, and is a member of the InCommon Community Assurance and Trust Board.

Her work is focused on research and education field, and she has worked on security and data management solutions on various projects including Earth System Grid (ESG), Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) and Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). Prior to that she worked on the Globus Toolkit engineering team and customer engagement teams, leading the efforts in web services and security technologies. Rachana received her MS in Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Dr. Christa Baker is a Jane Coffin Childs postdoc fellow in the lab of Dr. Mala Murthy at Princeton University, where she studies neural circuits underlying acoustic communication in Drosophila. During her PhD at Washington University in St. Louis in the lab of Dr. Bruce Carlson, she investigated central and peripheral mechanisms of temporal coding in weakly electric fishes. Her work combines calcium imaging, electrophysiology, connectomics, animal behavior, computational modeling, and comparative approaches to reveal basic principles of neural coding.

Helen Barbas is Professor at Boston University and School of Medicine. She studied neuroscience at McGill University (PhD) and Harvard Medical School (postdoctoral). She established and directs the Neural Systems Laboratory at Boston University, funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIMH and NINDS), the National Science Foundation and Autism Speaks. Her research focuses on the organization of the cerebral cortex, in general, and specifically on the pattern and synaptology of prefrontal pathways with excitatory and inhibitory systems associated with cognition, memory and emotions. Her work has led to establishment of a predictive model that links the laminar structure of the cortex to its connections (The Structural Model), the development of the cortex, the stability/plasticity continuum of cortical areas, and the preferential vulnerability of specific areas to neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, including schizophrenia, depression and autism.

Dr. Boassa is Director of Core efforts in Probe Development and Refinement at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) at the University of California San Diego. She has expertise in neuroscience, cell and molecular biology and sophisticated microscopy and analysis. She leads activities related to the development, characterization, enhancement and application of new molecular-genetic probes and chemical-labeling approaches for state-of-the-art correlated light and electron microscopy (CLEM). Her research interests focus on understanding normal and abnormal cell biological processes underlying neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Boassa uniquely possesses knowledge and hands-on experience on a variety of disciplines ranging from light microscopy, and EM, image analysis and 3D reconstructions, to molecular biology, biochemistry and electrophysiology, which she applies to her research projects implementing both in vivo and in vitro tools in a multidisciplinary approach.

Timo holds a shared appointment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC), focusing on large-scale data analysis and visualization, and at the University of Utah, serving as Associate Director for Research of the Center for Extreme Data Management Analysis and Visualization (CEDMAV). His research interests include large-scale machine learning, data analysis, visualization, medical image analysis, topology, volume modeling, and virtual reality.

Timo joined LLNL in December 2006. Prior to that, he was a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received a Ph.D. in computer science in 2004 from the University of California, Davis, and an M.S. and B.S. in mathematics/computer science from the Leipniz University, Hannover, Germany in 2000 and 1997, respectively.

JoAnn Buchanan is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Allen Institute and a member of the Neural Coding-EM Connectomics team and the IARPA MICrONS project. Since becoming engaged in EM Connectomics, her focus has been on sample prep and designing protocols for heavy metal en bloc staining. She has performed electron microscopy on a variety of organisms including Drosophila, mosquito, firefly, leech, squid, Aplysia, mouse, rat and human. JoAnn received her M.S. from Northeastern University where she is currently a Ph.D. candidate and her work is focused on glia in the mouse visual cortex.

Julia Buhmann is currently a PostDoc at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. She did her PhD both in the Lab of Jan Funke at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus and in the lab of Matthew Cook (ETH Zurich). During her PhD, she developed AI-based algorithms for the detection of microtubules and synapses in Electron Microscopy Datasets of brain tissue. Together with the Funke Lab, she successfully overcame the challenges of processing a 100 TB image dataset resulting in synaptic partner predictions for the first whole-brain EM dataset of the fruit fly (FAFB).

Dr. Eric Bushong is Director of Specimen Development. In this role, he is responsible for the development of new specimen preparative methods to propel resource capabilities for correlated multi scale, multimodal imaging.

He is a talented and very accomplished microscopist and neuroscientist, whose early contributions were instrumental in redefining our understanding of astrocyte morphology and their role in the nervous system. As an active senior scientist at NCMIR, he oversees a portfolio of technically challenging DBP’s involving the application of correlated light, x-ray and electron microscopic techniques.

Dr. Bushong is also responsible for managing NCMIR’s portfolio of DBP and Collaborative and Service projects, serving as a point of contact to project PIs and providing unique specimen development and animal handling expertise – helping external investigators to develop protocols and apply NCMIR multi-scale imaging technologies and expertise to each project.