Streelman grew up in Chestertown Md, where he developed a keen interest in the outdoors. He graduated with a BS in Biology from Bucknell University. While there, he attended a semester (plus one cold winter-mester) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole Massachusetts — where a chance encounter with Les Kaufman, Karel Liem, a few jars of pickled fish and a dental X-ray technician led to his lifelong love of cichlids. Streelman won the Pangburn Scholar-Athlete award (lacrosse) at BU.

T. Richard Nichols received the B.S. degree in biology from Brown University, Providence, RI, USA, in 1969, and the Ph.D. degree in physiology from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 1974. He is currently a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.,He is currently a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Dr. Lewis A. Wheaton received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005. He was a fellow at the National Institutes of Health (Medical Neurology Branch, 2001-2005) studying neural function and recovery of motor control after stroke. In mid-2005 he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Maryland) where he performed neuroscience research in aging and stroke motor control in Veterans.

During his graduate work at UC, Berkeley, Simon sought to uncover general principles of animal locomotion that reveal control strategies underlying the remarkable stability and maneuverability of movement in nature. His work has demonstrated the importance animals’ natural dynamics for maintaining stability in the absence of neural feedback. His research emphasizes the importance of placing neural control in the appropriate dynamical context using mathematical and physical models.

Dr. Pamela Bhatti is Professor and Associate Chair for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech. Her research is dedicated to overcoming sensory loss in human hearing through focused neural stimulation, and novel implantable sensors. Dr. Bhatti also conducts research in cardiac imaging to assess and monitor cardiovascular disease. She received her B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1989), her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington (1993), and her Ph.D.

Ravi Kane is the Garry Betty/V Foundation Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Cancer Nanotechnology. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1993. Also, he received an M.S. in Chemical Engineering Practice and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT, working with Bob Cohen and Bob Silbey. After postdoctoral research with George Whitesides in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, he joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as an assistant professor in 2001.

Dr. Wood completed his graduate training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there he worked under the guidance of Drs. H. Harry Asada and Roger Kamm to develop and use microfluidics to identify mechanisms governing vascular geometry.