Rob
Nickells

Dr. Nickells is a native of Canada and received an honors BSc degree in biology and biochemistry at the University of Victoria, B.C. He went on to complete his PhD in developmental biology under Dr. Leon Browder at the University of Calgary. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1994. His work at Wisconsin helped open the field of studying apoptotic cell death of retinal ganglion cells after optic nerve damage and was an early advocate of using mouse models to study the molecular mechanisms of ganglion cell neuropathology. His current work is centered on investigating the contributions of different members of the BCL2 gene family in the process of intrinsic apoptosis in both acute and chronic optic neuropathies.