Dr. Angueyra is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department of the University of Maryland at College Park, where he is also member of the Brain and Behavior Institute.
Dr. Angueyra received his M.D. from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA (Laboratory Fred Rieke). He completed his postdoctoral training at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, MD (Laboratories of Wei Li and Katie Kindt).
Areas of Interest
- Eye development
- Retinal circuits
- Cell fate and Transcription factors
- Colour Vision
Degrees
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M.D.Universidad Nacional de Colombia
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Ph.D.University of Washington
My main goal as a teacher is for students to develop independence and critical thinking.
In my experience, teaching is most effective and enjoyable when intertwined with the same approaches used to promote equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), as they share the same principles.
I consider that my most important role as a teacher is to ensure that students understand how knowledge is built. This process requires building a culture of learning, where bias and access barriers are removed, so that anyone feels safe, can freely ask questions and grow.
Because of its potential applications in regenerative medicine, one of the ultimate goals of neuroscience is to build a nervous system from scratch. Despite incredible advances over the last decades in identifying the different cell types and subtypes in each brain region ("parts list") and, in mapping the connectivity of the brain ("wiring diagram"), our ability to make functional organoids that contain many cell types is still in its infancy. The overarching goal of our group's research is to tackle two of the main hurdles in this field — the correct generation of parts and their appropriate wiring — by determining, during development, (1) how progenitor cells make decisions to acquire specific neural fates, (2) how these developing neurons make connections with specific postsynaptic partners and (3) which mechanisms are required to coordinate fate and connectivity locally and globally across an entire organ (patterning).
Our research focuses on the retina, because of its physical and experimental accessibility, and the near complete mapping of retinal cell subtypes and connectivity. It also exploits the technical advantages of zebrafish enabling both fast prototyping and deep mechanistical insights. Our ultimate goal is to use this developmental knowledge to establish methods and manipulations capable of directing cellular fate and of guiding rewiring, in the context of regenerative or replacement therapies in neurodegenerations or other conditions characterized by neuronal loss.
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Professional
