Ph.D. – Neurobiology; Brown University
Joe graduated with a bachelors’ degree in Oceanography and Marine Ecology from the Florida Institute of Technology and worked as a SCUBA diver for the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He spent time at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and at Harvard Medical School before obtaining a PhD in Neuroscience from Brown University. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health and is now a Professor of Biology at Providence College and Adjunct Faculty in the MBL Cellular Dynamics Program. Throughout his academic career Joe has been interested in imaging using a wide variety of techniques from underwater photography to light and electron microscopy. Joe has taken his camera and dive gear around the world and has photographed the shipwrecks of Truk Lagoon, the sharks of Palau, the coral walls of Cozumel, and the coral reefs of Thailand, among others. His research focuses on the function of Alzheimer’s proteins and uses the squid giant axon as a model system. His work as been published in magazine articles and on the covers of scientific journals including; Molecular Biology of the Cell and Traffic. Currently, Joe is preparing for a year at sea capturing images of the organisms along Darwin’s Voyage through microscopes, telescopes, and the macro lens.