Principal Investigator
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Dan Speiser
Dan is a graduate of East Lansing High School ('99) and Carleton College ('03). He earned a PhD as a member of Sonke Johnsen's Sensory Ecology lab at Duke University ('10) and was a post-doc in Todd Oakley's Evolutionary Biology lab at UC Santa Barbara (2011-14). Dan started his current position as an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina in 2014. He's not exactly sure when mollusks became his muse, but it probably dates back to childhood battles with marauding garden slugs and gruesome attempts at homemade calamari. |
Post-doctoral Scholar
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Alex Kingston
Alex got her BS from Arizona State University. She received her PhD from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she studied extraocular photoreception with Tom Cronin. Alex joined the Speiser lab in the Fall of 2015 where she began studying the molecular, structural, and functional complexities of dispersed visual systems in chitons and scallops. Alex also studies the co-evolution of weaponry, armor, and vision in snapping shrimp. Alex enjoys (studying, not eating) crustaceans and molluscs, coffee, making messes, and logic. |
PhD Student
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Dan Chappell
Dan got his B.S. from Ohio University. He is currently working on his PhD at USC. studying the neurobiology of eyed chitons. He is interested in the neurobiology underlying dispersed visual systems. Dan enjoys rock climbing, injecting chitons with fluorescent dyes, and being another Dan in the lab. |
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Nick Steichmann
Nick got his BA in Biology from Augustana College in 2018. He is currently working on his PhD at USC, with an interest in scallop locomotion and neurobiology. Nick is an outdoors enthusiast who enjoys camping, fishing, scuba diving, and hiking with his dog. |
Undergraduate Researchers
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Tyler Horan
Tyler is a sophomore in the USC honors college studying biology and neuroscience. His research involves studying the many-eyed visual system of scallops through behavioral experiments. For his next project, he will determine if associative learning can be retained through autotomy in sea stars. He plans to attend graduate school and continue research within the field of neuroscience. |
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Rebecca Lucia
Rebecca is a junior at USC studying biology and marine science. Her current work in the lab deals with visual systems in snapping shrimp. She is currently using behavioral experiments to study their visual acuity will later investigate their spectral sensitivity. She is planning to attend graduate school and continue research in the marine science field. |
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Alex Siegfried
Alex is a junior in the USC honors college. He’s majoring in chemical engineering with a minor in Biology. His current research project focuses on extracting and identifying different pigments expressed in the shell plates of chitons. His next project will concern how chitons are able to biomineralize their radulas with magnetite. He’s done research in the Speiser lab during the 2017 and 2018 summers and hopes to continue that trend. He plans on going to medical school. |