Good Luck Fernando!
Posted on November 8, 2011 by pwpadmin.
Fernando Oliveira has accepted a tenure track position as Professor Adjunto (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in the Department of Biological Science, Federal University of São Paolo, São Paulo, Brazil.
We all gathered in Chinatown to wish farewell and good luck to Fernando, Caroline, and Daniel in Brazil, Fernando, Caroline and Daniel! Maybe the lab will get an invitation to visit your place in the summer of 2016???
Fernando joined our laboratory group in the summer of 2008. Having experience conducting whole-cell patch experiments, he readily picked up patching onto CA1 pyramidal neurons from hippocampal slice tissue. Contrary to majority of the slice patch experimenters, Fernando actually found it much easier to record CA1 neurons from aged (>28 month old) rather than postnatal (20-28 day old) rat hippocampal slices! This allowed him to collect technically challenging calcium imaging data from CA1 hippocampal pyramidal neurons from young adult and aged rats for a project that systematically examined alteration(s) (if any) of basic properties of calcium handling and homeostasis of CA1 neurons with normal aging. We are currently gathering more, and with luck the final, data for the calcium imaging project and will summarize our findings in a manuscript that will be submitted for peer review as soon as we can. Fernando will obviously continue to play a major role as we finalize this important series of experiments.
In addition to the calcium imaging project, Fernando was involved on a project that examined intrinsic excitability changes of CA1 pyramidal neurons in hippocampal slices from rats that learned a trace fear conditioning task. It took time, but he learned to record postburst afterhyperpolarizations. His contribution resulted in an authorship on the Journal of Neurophysiology manuscript (McKay, Matthews, Oliveira and Disterhoft, 2009).
During his tenure at the lab, Fernando was always helpful and friendly to everyone. We shall miss his big smile and his favorite phrase spoken with his Brazilian accent: “Life is not easy”.
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