Anirvan Nandy, who has a PhD in psychology from the University of Southern California and Junjie Guo who has a PhD in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, have been named to endowed fellowships at the Department of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine.
Nandy has become a Yale Orthwein Scholar for Visual Science for his extensive, promising work with neural signal processing and shape processing as they relate to human perception and attention. His background in psychophysics and computational modeling helped him construct the first comprehensive model of visual crowding, a ubiquitous phenomenon in peripheral vision that severely degrades the human ability to identify objects in clutter.
The Orthwein Endowment was created in honor of William Orthwein, a 1938 graduate of Yale College who is remembered for making a substantial and positive impact on his community. It selects recipients based on the attributes they share with Orthwein: intellect, talent, creativity, and humane values.
Guo was selected as a Yale Scholar in Neurodegenerative Research, an honor that recognizes outstanding work in neurodegeneration. Guo’s research has focused on developing and applying new tools to investigate post-transcriptional gene regulatory mechanisms in the nervous system, as well as RNA-based pathophysiological mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases. This could lead to the discovery of new therapeutic targets and potential treatment of these neurological diseases.
Since its inauguration in 2005, Yale’s program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair (CNNR) has been prolific: primary faculty members who have been affiliated with the program have published over 300 scientific articles and are frequently asked to speak at conferences. CNNR currently supports dozens of primary faculty, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, and technical assistants.