Salvatore J. Cherra III, Ph.D.
I attended the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania where I graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Biology. During my undergraduate career, I was fortunate to spend a year assisting Dr. Terrence Sweeney with project focused on the microvasculature of the uterine-ovarian blood flow network. I spent the summer of my junior in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania completing a Summer Undergraduate Research Program in the Pathology Department.
Upon graduating from the University of Scranton, I moved to Pittsburgh to earn my Ph.D. with Dr. Charleen Chu at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. My dissertation focused on understanding the roles of macroautophagy during neurodegeneration.
After gaining expertise in cellular biology and biochemistry with Dr. Chu, I pursued a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Yishi Jin at the University of California, San Diego. During this fellowship I gained expertise in genetic and genomic analyses to investigate synaptic connectivity using the roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans.
Combining my expertise in biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics, I began my independent lab at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Branching off from my postdoctoral work, we are using C. elegans to uncover how synaptic connectivity is regulated through intrinsic (neuronal) and extrinsic (non-neuronal/glial) mechanisms.