Cheryl Clarkson-Paredes, DMD, Ph.D., joined George Washington University in 2017 as a Research Scientist at GWNIC (GW Nanofabrication and Imaging Center). Her Ph.D. training at the University of Salamanca was centered on understanding the homeostatic plasticity in the brainstem after sensorial deprivation using neuroanatomical, microscopic, genetic, and physiological techniques. Her postdoctoral appointment at the University of Pittsburgh was focused on changes at pre/postsynaptic neuronal and glial components after temporal deprivation; she was using ultrastructural/molecular analyses at the electron microscopic level, including freeze substitution, postembedding immunogold labeling, and serial section TEM-3D reconstructions.

At the GWNIC, she has been involved in projects to demonstrate, using volume electron microscopy, the development of a new procedure for generating miniature 3D versions of the brain called “organoids” from human stem cells, creating the first organoids capable of myelination, modeling the brain’s structure and function more closely than ever. Cheryl has been developing biological experiments for correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) to localize and identify different types of cells with singular ultrastructural characteristics and working as part of a team to design an innovative image analysis workflow for mining SEM+ postembedding images to quantify proteins expression at different areas of the CNS.