Neuroscience Seminar: Paul Katz
Speaker: Paul Katz, PhD
Distinguished University Professor, Neuroscience Institute
Director, Center for Neuromics
Georgia State University
Paul Katz presents, “The Evolution of Swimming Behaviors and their Neural Circuits in Nudibranch Sea Slugs” on May 7, 2015 at 2:00pm in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Main Building, Room 311.
Paul S Katz graduated from Northwestern University in 1982 and received his PhD in 1989 from Cornell University, where he worked on the stomatogastric ganglion of crabs in the laboratory of Dr Ronald Harris-Warrick. He began his work on nudibranchs as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston in collaboration with Dr William Frost. He moved to Georgia State University in 1997, where he is currently a Distinguished University Professor in the Neuroscience Institute and Director of the Center for Neuromics. He served as Co-director for the Neural Systems and Behavior course at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, MA, as Associate Editor for the Journal of Neurophysiology, and as President of the International Society for Neuroethology.
About Dr.Katz’s Research
Research is focused on understanding how neuronal circuits operate.Sea slugs (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Heterobranchia, Nudipleura) are primarily used because they have fairly simple brains and simple behaviors. Katz works out the neural mechanisms for these behaviors at the cellular level. Furthermore, because there are many species with similar nervous systems, the results can be compared to the neural circuits in these species to learn about the evolution of neural circuits and behavior.
Sponsored By: University of Georgia Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute