Vision Sciences Poster Presentation Award Recipients
2025 Winner and Honorable Mentions
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Andrew Miller
Postdoctoral Fellow, Neuroscience, SMPH Mentor: Raunak Sinha
Poster presented: “Retinal circuit specializations for encoding central vision”

Lauren Kresser
Graduate Student, Neuroscience, SMPH Mentor: Ari Rosenberg
Poster presented: “Sensorimotor associations at the parieto-occipital junction are experience dependent”

Rabeeya Hamid
Graduate Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering, CoE Mentor: Mikhail Kats
Poster presented: “All-passive upconversion of low-intensity incoherent near-infrared light for human detection”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Aindrila Saha
Graduate Student, Neuroscience, SMPH Mentor: Raunak Sinha
Poster presented: “Functional development of cone photoreceptors in the primate retina and retinal organoids”

Celia Bisbach
Postdoctoral Researcher, Waisman Center, VCRGE Mentor: David Gamm
Poster presented: “Modeling Usher Syndrome using Human Stem Cell-derived Retinal Organoids”

Kushin Mukherjee
Graduate Student, Psychology, L&S Mentor: Karen Schloss
Poster presented: “Estimating human color-concept associations from multimodal language models”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Jacob Khoussine
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Mrinalini Hoon
Poster presented: “Retinal output dysfunction in a model of congenital stationary night blindness.”

Michele Salzman
Graduate Student, Comparative Biomedical Sciences, SVM Mentor: Freya Mowat
Poster presented: “Age-associated changes in a measure of visual function in companion dogs”

Anoushka Kuckreja
Middleton HS Student, Research Intern, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Bikash Pattnaik
Poster presented: “Reducing the fidelity of specific tRNA to bridge the translation gap”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Zikang ‘John’ Zhu
Graduate Student, Neuroscience, SMPH Mentor: Ari Rosenberg
Poster presented: “Differential Clustering of Visual, Choice-, and Saccade-Related Activity in Macaque V3A and CIP.”

Michael Landowski
Postdoctoral Student, Medical Genetics, SMPH Mentor: Aki Ikeda
Poster presented: “A Novel Function of Transmembrane Protein 135 in Peroxisomal Homeostasis”

Clementine Zimnicki
Graduate Student, Psychology, College of L&S Mentor: Karen Schloss
Poster presented: “Squares vs. Maps: effects of configuration on the dark-is-more bias?”
No awards given this semester due to pandemic
No awards given this semester due to pandemic
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Sarah Rempel
Postdoctoral Researcher, Neuroscience, SMPH Mentor: Timothy Gomez
Poster presented: “Human stem cell-derived photoreceptors switch from cell autonomous neurite growth to non-autonomous process stretching with retinal organoid age.”

Ryan Niemeier
Graduate Student, Biomedical Engineering, SMPH Mentor: Jeremy Rogers
Poster presented: “LINK: A unified imaging platform with multiscale potential”

Abhilash Sawant
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Mrinalini Hoon
Poster presented: “Mixed GABA-Glycine inhibitory synapses mediate postsynaptic inhibition on mouse ON alpha retinal ganglion cells”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Allison Ludwig
Graduate Student, Comparative Biomedical Sciences, SMPH Mentor: David Gamm
Poster presented: “Comprehensive in vivo assessment of human pluripotent stem cell-derived photoreceptor survival & differentiation potential in the S334ter rat model of retinal degeneration.”

Kazuya Oikawa
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Gillian McLellan
Poster presented: “Association between aqueous humor (AH) transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta and intraocular pressure in a spontaneous glaucoma model”

Abhilash Sawant
Graduate Student, Neuroscience, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentors: Mrinalini Hoon & Raunak Sinha
Poster presented: “Mixed GABA-Glycine synapses on mouse retinal ON alpha ganglion cell dendrites”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Divya Sinha
Postdoctoral Researcher, Waisman Center; Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Dave Gamm
Poster presented: “Modulations of mitochondrial respiration in hPSC-RPE.”

Erica Macke
Graduate Student, Medical Genetics, SMPH Mentor: Aki Ikeda
Poster presented: “Age-dependent retinal abnormalities and neurodegeneration in the small kinky tail mutant”

Chris Racey
Graduate Student, Psychology, College of L&S Mentor: Karen Schloss
Poster presented: “Color naming fluency does not explain color preference when chroma is controlled”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Heather Schmitt
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Rob Nickells
Poster presented: “Targeting HDAC3 activity prevents retinal ganglion cell nuclear atrophy and apoptosis after optic nerve injury”

Brad Gundlach
Graduate Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering Mentor: Mikhail Kats
Poster presented: “Enhancing human color vision by breaking binocular redundancy”

Erica Macke
Graduate Student, Medical Genetics, SMPH Mentor: Aki Ikeda
Poster presented: “Age-related retinal abnormalities and neurodegeneration in the Small Kinky Tail mutant”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Maggie Maes
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Rob Nickells
Poster presented: “BAX oligomerization kinetics and its role in retinal ganglion cell death.”

Pawan Shahi
Graduate Student, Pediatrics, SMPH Mentor: Bikash Pattnaik
Poster presented: “Read-through therapy for blindness using iPS-RPE cells”

Li Xuan Tan
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Aparna Lakkaraju
Poster presented: “FDA-approved sphingomyelinase inhibitors stimulate cellular clearance and reduce inflammation in the retinal pigment epithelium”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Patrick Barney
Undergraduate Student, Waisman Center; Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Joe Phillips, Gamm Lab
Poster presented: “Biological and synthetic membranes for human induced pluripotent stem cell-based transplantation therapy.”

Daniel Albers Safir
Graduate Student, Computer Sciences, College of L&S Mentor: Michael Gleicher
Poster presented: “Lightness Constancy in Surface Visualization”

Maggie Maes
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Rob Nickells
Poster presented: “BAX oligomerization kinetics and its role in retinal ganglion cell death.”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Caitlin Mac Nair
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Rob Nickells
Poster presented: “ATP signalling pathways trigger glial activation in the mouse retina.”

Ennio Perez
Undergraduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Dave Gamm
Poster presented: “Investigating the role of VSx2 (CHX10) in human retinogenesis using iPS cells”

Karissa Tilbury
Graduate Student, Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering Mentor: Paul Campagnola
Poster presented: “Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy and multiphoton fabrication”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Patrick Halbach
Graduate Student, Pediatrics, SMPH Mentor: Pattnaik & Pillers
Poster presented: “Oxytocin regulation of retinal epithelium cell function.”

Chi-Chieh Huang
Graduate Student, Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering Mentor: Hongrui Jiang
Poster presented: “A bio-inspired cylindrical lens based on reflection from an array of micro-mirrors fabricated on a cylindrical flexible substrate”

Caitlin Mac Nair
Graduate Student Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Rob Nickells
Poster presented: “Attenuated glial activation after optic nerve crush in BAX-deficient mice”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Michelle Wilson
Graduate Student Surgical Sciences, SVM Mentors: Christopher Murphy and Paul Nealey
Poster presented: “Hydrogels with well-defined peptide-hydrogel spacing and concentration: Impact on epithelial cell behavior”

Bader Aldalali
Graduate Student Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering Mentors: Li Zhang and Hongrui Jiang
Poster presented: “A micro camera utilizing a microlens array for multiple viewpoint imaging”

Erica Rosenbaum
Graduate Student, Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, SMPH Mentor: Nansi Colley
Poster presented: “XPORT, an eye-specific chaperone for Rhodopsin and TRP, is essential for photoreceptor cell survival”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Brandon Smith
Graduate Student, Computer Sciences, L&S Mentor: Li Zhang
Poster presented: “Light field video stabilization”

Joel Shires
Graduate Student, Neuroscience, SMPH Mentor: Michele Basso
Poster presented: “Basal ganglia play a key role in spatial memory for eye movements”

Ryan Liegel
Graduate Student, Cell Biology, Neurobiology & Anatomy at Medical College of Wisconsin Mentor: D.J. Sidjanin, MCW
Poster presented: “Blind sterile locus 2 (bs2) is a hypomorphic mutation in Agps”
Winner
Honorable Mentions

Greg Cipriano
Graduate Student, Computer Sciences, L&S Mentor: Michael Gleicher
Poster presented: “Molecular surface abstraction”

Xuefeng Zeng
Graduate Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering Mentor: Hongrui Jiang
Poster presented: “An endoscope utilizing tunable-focus microlenses actuated through infrared light”

Feng Liu and Yuzhen Niu
Graduate Students, Computer Sciences, L&S Mentor: Michael Gleicher
Poster presented: “Exploring perceptual plausibility for vision and graphics applications”