Mock Gardner Lab People

Dr. Tim Gardner is an associate professor of bioengineering at the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. 

Dr. Gardner holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University and earned his doctorate in biology and physics at Rockefeller University. He completed his post-doctoral fellowships at Rockefeller University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prior to coming to the University of Oregon he worked as a founding member of Neuralink Corp., a company building a fully implanted bidirectional interface to the human brain. 

Melissa Bemrose is the Lab Manager for the Gardner Lab, providing support to student researchers and post-doctoral scholars.  Her research within the lab centers around 3D printing and immunohistochemistry.
 
Melissa holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Wittenberg University. Before joining the Gardner Lab, she worked as the Research & Technology Core Manager at the Rogosin Institute – Xenia Division, a non-profit organization specializing in hydrogel-based cell encapsulation for targeted drug delivery and cell-based therapies.

Taylor Nakayama is a postdoctoral scholar in Tim Gardner's lab. Nakayama earned her PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior ​at the University of California, Irvine in 2024 for her work on neuroplasticity in mouse cortex in the labs of Sunil Gandhi, Mathew Blurton-Jones, and Gyorgy Lur. Prior to her doctorate, she earned a B.S. in Genetics and Genomics at the University of California, Davis while working in JoAnne Engebrecht's lab and conducted post-bacc research at the University of California, San Francisco in Erik Ullian's lab. Nakayama's research interests lie in understanding plasticity mechanisms for neurotherapeutic purposes. In the Gardner lab, Nakayama's work will support the efforts of the Adelson Medical Research Foundation. Outside of lab, she enjoys climbing, skiing, and adventures with her dog.

Rose is a graduate student in the Institute of Neuroscience. She has a bachelor’s degree in biophysics with a math minor from Vassar College, where she worked with the Vassar Applied Optics Lab using optical techniques to quantify characteristics of C. elegans movement patterns. 
Between college and graduate school, Rose worked at Janelia Research Campus as a technician, where she studied place learning behavior in fruit flies. 

Rose is a mentor in the Junior Undergraduate-Mentorship Program (JUMP) and Outreach Co-Chair of Women in Graduate Sciences. Outside of research, she enjoys clicker training her cat, birding, and hiking.

Diana is a graduate student in the Knight Campus Bioengineering program whose work focuses on creating new devices for neuroscience applications. While attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she spent much of her time as an undergraduate doing research in a cutting-edge biosensors lab. During this time, she learned extensive skills in microfabrication, materials science, and electrical engineering. This work drew her to the Gardner lab where she can apply those skills in sensor design to make more effective neural interfaces to advance our understanding and treatment of the peripheral and central nervous system.

George is a PhD student as part of the Institute of Neuroscience (ION). He has a B.S in Neuroscience from Washington State University where he studied infant emotion as part of the Gartstein Lab. Nowadays, he is interested in using machine learning to understand the structure of birdsong, artificial neural network interoperability, as well as forming bidirectional links of communication with birds via generative learning. 

In the future, George aims to work on technologies that create virtual/augmented reality experiences based on the user behavior and neurofeedback.