Lucas Cheadle, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, presents "Non-canonical roles of Oligodendrocyte Precursor Cells in visual circuit refinement and remodeling".

Dr. Lucas Cheadle is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on Long Island, New York, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar. The first Indigenous faculty member at CSHL, Dr. Cheadle is originally from the Chickasaw Nation in rural Oklahoma. Dr. Cheadle received a bachelor’s degree from Smith College and a PhD from Yale University in Neuroscience before training as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Michael Greenberg, chair of the Neurobiology department at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cheadle joined the faculty of CSHL in August of 2020, where his work merges cutting-edge approaches ranging from in vivo multi-photon microscopy in awake mice to single-cell genomics to define the contributions of immune cells and immune signaling pathways to neurological development and function. In parallel with studies of healthy brain development, the Cheadle Lab investigates the mechanisms through which inflammatory signals outside of the brain contribute to neurodevelopmental disorders including autism and schizophrenia. A long-term goal of the Cheadle Lab is to harness these insights to inform the design of new therapeutic strategies for treating disorders of postnatal brain development. The scope and impact of Dr. Cheadle’s research have been recognized with a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Rita Allen Scholar Award, a McKnight Scholar Award, and a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship.

Host: James Letts (jaletts@ucdavis.edu)