Meet Our Researchers

Researchers around the globe trust WPI products. Here are a few who have shared glimpses into their research areas. If you would like to share your story, please email us at [email protected].

Meet Dr. Robert Zawadzki

Dr. Robert Zawadzki is an associate professor of ophthalmology and vision sciences at University of California, Davis Health. He is using a mouse model and some novel technologies to study various types of retinal and optic nerve hypoplasia (ONH) diseases. Dr. Zawadzki is developing of new instrumentation for high-resolution in vivo retina imaging in mice (allowing visualization of individual cellular structures). He works with Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), Scanning Laser Opthalmoscopy (SLO) and Adaptive Optics (AO). He uses WPI’s isofluorane anesthesia systems with facemasks designed for mice, the WPI ATC2000 Animal Temperature Controller and the UMP3 UltraMicroPump with Intraocular Kit for making injections in the mouse eye.

Zhang, P., Miller, E. B., Manna, S. K., Meleppat, R. K., Pugh, E. N., & Zawadzki, R. J. (2019). Temporal speckle-averaging of optical coherence tomography volumes for in-vivo cellular resolution neuronal and vascular retinal imaging. Neurophotonics, 6(04), 1. http://doi.org/10.1117/1.NPh.6.4.041105

Meet Xiling Li

Xiling Li is a fifth year graduate student at the University of Southern California who is interested in neuroscience, especially signal transduction at a neuromuscular junction. Ideally, she wants to look at the properties and molecular mechanisms for synaptic transmission and plasticity and how these are modulated during development and in disease models. Xiling uses WPI's line of microinjection instruments and electrophysiology equipment.

Xiling's paper can be found at https://elifesciences.org/articles/34338
Xiling's google scholar link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rjDUN3UAAAAJ&hl=zh-CN

Meet Dr. Delany Rodriguez

Delany Rodriguez, PhD is a researcher at the De Tomaso Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara working with colonial ascidians to study the aging process on the vascular system. His goal is to improve our "health span," not just the life span. Dr. Delany is using WPI microinjection pumps and needles. Want more information. See these research articles from Dr. Delany.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30760410
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28615322

Meet Dr. Chuanzhen Zhao

Chuanzhen Zhao, a 4th year Ph.D. student at UCLA, works in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Department of Psychiatry with Prof. Paul S. Weiss and Prof. Anne M. Andrews. They are developing biosensors with the femtomolar (10^-15 moles/L) range detection limit in the physiological environment for neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, which may be used in ex vivo, in vitro, and in vivo studies. He is interested in developing next-generation bioelectronics towards implantable neural recording probes, point-of-care devices, and wearable sensor systems. In his research, Chuanzhen uses WPI silver/silver chloride reference electrodes. You can find the research papers here:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/319.abstract
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b02054
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.5b01211