Monavarfeshani Aboozar

Aboozar Monavarfeshani received the PhD degree in biological sciences from Virginia Tech, and the postdoctoral training from Boston Children's Hospital and the Center for Brain Science, Harvard University. During his doctoral training, he investigated molecules that are important for the formation of neural connections between retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and neurons in several subcortical visual centers in the brain including the dorsal and ventral lateral geniculate nucleus, superior colliculus, and suprachiasmatic nucleus. In his postdoc, he is using single nucleus RNA sequencing to measure, both in post-mortem human tissues and in model organisms, the transcriptional changes that occur in degenerating RGCs, and in other cell types residing in the optic nerve head (ONH)–the primary site of glaucomatous injury to the axons of RGCs.