News

2023

Award from Research to Prevent Blindness

Woot woot! We have received the Disney Award for Amblyopia Research from the Research to Prevent Blindness Foundation. The award will support new work in the lab on retinal cell types that mediate recovery from amblyopia.

Welcome Anu, Nahreen, and Cooper :)

Three summer students have joined our team! Anuradha Ramdin is an undergraduate at the University of Miami and a recipient of the Georgia Tech SURE Scholarship. She will be working on designing multi-animal electrophysiological recording and visual stimulation environments. Nahreen is a student at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School who has joined our lab via the Emory Next Gen Scholars Internship Program. She will be working on repair and maintenance of Perkins Braillers as part of our partnership with the Center for Visually Impaired. Cooper Allen is an undergraduate at Georgia Tech who joins us from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He will be working to refine our head restraint devices and building instrumentation to support experimental projects in the lab. Welcome Anu, Nahreen, and Cooper!

Welcome Lauren and Rohan :)

Two new undergraduates have joined the lab! Lauren Wilson is a junior at Georgia Tech majoring in biomedical engineering and minoring in industrial design. Rohan Raman is a sophomore majoring in neuroscience and minoring in computing and intelligence. We recruited them to help to advance our mechanical instrumentation and mouse brain histology efforts, and we are thrilled that they have joined. Welcome, Lauren and Rohan!

2022

Welcome Danielle :)

Danielle Dowe has joined the lab! Danielle is a PhD student in the GT-Emory BME program, who previously conducted research on neurodegenerative diseases using biochemistry, molecular biology, and genomics techniques. Looking forward, she is interested in development of tools for neurorehabilitation and we are thrilled that she has chosen to pursue this goal in our lab. Welcome, Danielle!

Collaborative Funding from NINDS/BRAIN

Our friends at Open Ephys have been awarded a Direct-to-Phase-II SBIR grant from the NINDS and the NIH BRAIN Initiative to support a collaborative project with our lab. We look forward to using their next-generation electrophysiology and behavior system to study visually-guided behavior in freely-moving, unencumbered rodents.

Farewell Ta'Kayla and Arvin

As the summer ends, we say goodbye to two lab members. Ta’Kayla is transferring to Georgia Southern University to pursue her passion in audiology through a degree program in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Arvin completed his rotation and will be joining the Birey lab to pursue research in neural development using assembloid models. We’re grateful for their contributions during a “critical period” for the lab. We look forward to following their careers!

Welcome Rob :)

We are thrilled to have Robert Lamprecht join our team as a research technician! Rob is a recent college graduate with a degree in computer science, broad research experience in neurobiology, and glowing praise from previous labs. Rob will be helping us to set up our in-vivo electrophysiology system, and developing new paradigms for visual and optogenetic stimulation in mice. Welcome, Rob!

Funding from National Eye Institute

The lab has been awarded funding from the National Eye Institute to investigate cortical mechanisms of visual enhancement following retinal inactivation. Hooray!

Welcome Arvin :)

Arvin Sarkissian starts his research rotation the lab! Arvin is a first-year PhD student in the Emory Neuroscience Program. He comes at an exciting time when the lab has just received approval to beginning in-vivo work! He will be learning techniques for performing in-vivo electrophysiology, delivering visual stimulation, and driving experience-dependent plasticity in the mouse visual system. Welcome, Arvin!

Welcome Ta'Kayla :)

Ta’Kayla Wright has joined the lab! Ta’Kayla is a sophomore at Georgia Tech majoring in neuroscience. We have recruited her to the lab to study synaptic and instrinsic changes in the mouse brain following visual deprivation. Welcome, Ta’Kayla!

2021

Fong lab opens

Ming has arrived in Atlanta and the Fong lab is now officially open! She is excited to set up her research program in GT-Emory BME.

Welcome Yichao :)

Yichao Zhao has joined the lab! Chao is a first-year PhD student in the GT-Emory BME program, with previous research experience in cancer genetics and biomechanics. He is interested in computational biology, and we have convinced him to apply that interest to neuroscience and visual plasticity. Welcome, Chao!

Paper published in eLife

Our paper on correcting amblyopia in mice and cats after the critical period has been published in eLife, with co-authors in the Bear lab at MIT and Duffy lab at Dalhousie.

Hello world!

Welcome to the Fong Lab! We study neural plasticity and how it can be leveraged to treat neurological disorders. The lab will open in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech & Emory in October 2021.