Dr. Luca Della Santina has been an assistant professor at the College of Optometry, University of Houston, USA, since 2021. He received his M.Sc. degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2005, and he received his Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience in 2009. His research focuses on investigating the functional, circuit, and synaptic rearrangements of the retina following neurodegenerative diseases to identify novel cellular targets for early detection and treatment. His research laboratory develops novel computational tools for large-scale recording of neurons and identification of neural circuits, as well as computer vision approaches based on deep learning for the automatic detection of ocular diseases in clinical and smartphone photographs.
Dr. Thirumalini Vaithianathan is an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, USA. She received her Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology and Physiology from Auburn
University, Auburn, AL, USA, in 2005. She has devoted her career to understanding how changes in single synapse function affect the computational properties of the synapse, particularly in a disease model of retinal neuropathy, and understanding the function of a single synapse in depth, which requires knowledge about vesicle dynamics combining calcium signals that control the rate of release and recycling, as well the functional roles of the synaptic proteins that participate in stimulus-evoked responses.
