Affiliation: SUNY Geneseo, Department of Biology

Duane McPherson is an emeritus professor of biology at SUNY Geneseo, where he taught for 26 years in the areas of animal physiology, cellular neurobiology, and general biology. His research interests are in neuroethology and neurophysiology, especially in the synaptic organization of central pattern generator networks for locomotion. A major focus of his research is on the role of serotonin as a neuromodulator in locomotor systems of gastropod molluscs.

His interest in sensory hair cells grew from his physiology teaching and led to his organizing a symposium on the integrative biology of hair cells at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. This is one of the few major symposia ever to be dedicated specifically to the study of hair cells.

Dr. McPherson received a BA in Biology from Brown University, an MS in Zoology from the University of Georgia, and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, where he studied the neurophysiology of Aplysia with Dr. James E. Blankenship. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. James T. Buchanan at Marquette University, where he studied the synaptic organization of the spinal central pattern generator for swimming in lampreys.  Another of his interests is to develop undergraduate laboratory exercises that are both challenging and practical to carry out. He has developed a series of labs in physiology and neurobiology which are designed to allow students to discover fundamental concepts for themselves from the data they collect.